Homegrown Homeland Defense

[MKSheppard]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/921044/posts
(because the original article is on NY Times)

Homegrown Homeland Defense

By AUSTIN BUNN

The briefing takes place at dawn, about two miles from Arizona's southern frontier, in the driveway of a low-slung house with, perhaps not incidentally, a raised metal platform facing Mexico. Glenn Spencer's group checks for optics (binoculars), specs out their positions on a topo map and decides who gets to be ''Delta,'' ''Romeo'' and ''Foxtrot.'' Then, they caravan in trucks and S.U.V.'s to a private ranch northeast of Douglas, six blank miles from the border. There's no shade, just desert specked with mesquite shrubs, yuccas and prickly pear -- basically sand plus thorns.

The first report of the day squawks over the walkie-talkie: ''Be advised,'' says Spencer, the leader of this patrol. ''Border Patrol just apprehended 30 S.B.I.'s just south of Naco.'' Michael King, Spencer's technical director and a 12-year veteran of the National Guard, explains that S.B.I. stands for ''suspected border intruders,'' which is what we're watching for this morning. ''We use that term because we don't know if they're illegals or not,'' King says. ''Hey, they could be a bunch of very lost Mexican hikers. Not likely, but still.''

The group stops in a bleak acre, and Spencer jumps to work. He's 65 years old, gray-haired and grandfatherly, but he's almost giddy with excitement. It's the final minutes of morning, when U.S. Border Patrol shifts are changing over, and a peak time for S.B.I. movement. While King sets up the satellite dish and the seven others scatter to high positions with their binoculars, Spencer revs his all-terrain vehicle and dons goggles for a little reconnaissance. ''We have to go check the arroyos and cuts, because we can't get visuals down in there,'' he says, and he's off in a deliberate cloud of dust.

This is the work of American Border Patrol, an emergent and entirely unofficial wing of the country's homeland defense. Last summer, Spencer moved with his wife out from Los Angeles to Sierra Vista, Ariz., to start A.B.P., what he calls a neighborhood watch of the Arizona border. Since this ranch is not a neighborhood but forsaken desert, A.B.P. is more accurately a roving bureau of traffic reporters, dedicated to documenting illegal immigration where it happens. With satellite dishes, ground sensors and dozens of ''hawkeye'' spotters to call in sightings, A.B.P. tracks S.B.I., films them and notifies the Border Patrol while they upload the film live to the Internet. In quasi-military operations like this one, Spencer estimates that A.B.P. has helped capture more than 3,300 illegal immigrants. ''Our policy is not to touch them,'' Spencer says. ''That's the Border Patrol's job. We just want to show people what is happening down here.''

Spencer, who says that he has worked as a consultant to the Pentagon, a courtroom exhibit designer, a statistician and an anti-illegal-immigration advocate, came to Arizona last summer because it was ''the hot spot.'' Throughout most of the 70's and 80's, almost two-thirds of all undocumented workers went to California, and 30 percent headed to Los Angeles, the welcome mat. But during the mid-90's, the government tightened the border in San Diego with steel fences (the so-called Tortilla Curtain), illuminated by stadium-style lighting and fortified with motion detectors. Apprehensions in San Diego dropped by more than half in three years. By 2002, they were at a 29-year low. Now Arizona, with its 350 miles of Mexican frontier, has become the most popular crossing point.

A.B.P. is only the most organized and technologically ambitious of a cluster of unofficial border patrols that have emerged in Arizona since last year, including Civil Homeland Defense and Ranch Rescue. But the phenomenon probably reveals less about a crisis in illegal immigration (which, judging from the number of apprehensions, is down since 2000) than about an acute, frustrated patriotism. These are people who took the president at his word when he called for every American to stand vigilant and report suspicious activity after 9/11, and who live at one of the few remaining trapdoors into America.

Spencer, having lived in Los Angeles for more than 60 years, has a visceral reaction to illegal immigration. While talking to him, I realize that the creation of these citizens' border patrols is really the story of two migration trends: of Mexican immigrants crossing into Arizona and Californians moving into the American Southwest. After years of influx, Americans have started abandoning California, while Arizona has swelled. Most are simply departing a weak economy, but some, like Spencer, see in California -- and its $38 billion dollar deficit and diminished social services -- a glimpse of the country's future if it doesn't take action to stem the tide.

A.B.P. and the other border-control groups have been called vigilantes and militias, but Spencer doesn't carry a gun. He prefers cameras, which may be a more effective weapon when it comes to his cause. At his suburban ranch house, he has 100 tapes of border crossings stacked on shelves. The day before we went out into the desert, I asked him to show me one, and he picked a grainy, hand-held sequence shot from the side of the road, watching what looked like a group of illegal immigrants ushered into a Border Patrol car. It was even less thrilling than it sounds. This footage of the capture doesn't excite Spencer nearly as much as everything that comes before: the search, the discovery and the ability to send the evidence into the sky and back into people's homes around the country. The A.B.P. Web site even allows you to set up an alert so that anytime Spencer finds an S.B.I. on film, you know. ''I want people, when they get up in the morning, to turn on their television and get their border report with their weather report,'' Spencer says. ''Like, 'Ladies and gentlemen, 3,000 people made it across the border last night, and here are videos of them crossing.' ''

Back in the desert, playing with the binoculars, I turn out to be the first one to spot S.B.I. They were hiding on a distant ridge, lying down in what looked like white T-shirts. ''The reporter is the first to make a sighting?'' Spencer asks. ''Make sure to put that up on the Internet.'' I immediately regret saying anything. I don't want to be responsible for either the group's capture or A.B.P.'s success rate. But in that moment of scanning and searching, the obscure pleasures of an A.B.P. mission -- the observation of minute phenomenon, a kind of political bird-watching -- were obvious. If you're going to spend hours looking for something, it feels good to find it. When it turns out I've spotted only a cluster of yuccas (''It's reflective in the sun,'' Spencer tells me), I'm hit with genuine relief.

Spencer is more annoyed. Six actual S.B.I. spotted on a remote ridge are too far to film and at least 45 minutes away by all-terrain vehicle. Nobody thinks Spencer can get there before the Border Patrol will. Such is the complexity of documenting the undocumented. ''I'd hate to get skunked today,'' Spencer says. But he has been.

Illegal immigration is an incredibly chaotic process, one that Spencer, King and a dozen or so volunteers can't possibly hope to record better than the 9,300 agents working for the Border Patrol in the Southwest. ''If you've got 500 Border Patrol agents in an area, and they have a daunting task, what are 5 people going to do?'' asks Sheriff Tony Estrada of Santa Cruz County, whose jurisdiction includes the border town Nogales. ''Nothing,'' he says. ''The only thing they are hunting is publicity.''

Except that A.B.P. isn't hampered by bureaucracy, which allows them to experiment with new technology far below the Border Patrol's radar. In early May, Spencer successfully tested the group's first unmanned aerial vehicle -- a three-and-a-half-foot-long, five-and-a-half-foot-wide plane made of balsa and plastic rigged with a camera and transmitter. It's a hobbyist's dream made politically useful. By early June, Spencer plans to have the plane flying patterns synched to ground sensors. The economics of drone surveillance are irrefutable, and a drone-security program has already picked up support from Republicans, like Senators John McCain (of Arizona) and Pete Domenici (of New Mexico) as well as Asa Hutchinson, the undersecretary for border and transportation security. As of now, the Border Patrol still uses helicopters and small planes, rather than unmanned aerial vehicles. When I ask him about the privacy concerns of a drone plane cruising quietly at less than 500 feet over private property, Spencer waves me off. ''Look, if we wanted pictures of your backyard, we could buy them,'' he says. ''They already have satellites to do that.''

Austin Bunn is a frequent contributor to the magazine.

*****************

http://www.americanpatrol.com/FEATURES/ ... ature.html

Sierra Vista, Arizona -- August 9 - (ABP) American Border Patrol's mascot, Star, a ten- month-old German Shepherd, found her first group of suspected border intruders (SBIs) at 5:15 A.M. during a pre-dawn walk with ABP chief Glenn Spencer. As the pair crossed over a culvert, Star started barking. Spencer looked down and saw some of the SBIs. He immediately called the Border Patrol who responded rapidly and rounded up the entire group. ABPs sensors had picked up a large group moving through a nearby canyon at 4:34 A.M. "I think this is the same group," Spencer said.

[MKSheppard]

http://www.fox11az.com/news/local/stori ... 44257.html

Mexico calls for review of patrol action
Group reportedly held 29 crossers at gunpoint

11:49 AM MST on Wednesday, August 13, 2003

By Ignacio Ibarra
© 2003 ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Mexican officials are demanding an investigation into an Aug. 1 incident in which a group of 29 illegal border crossers - including children - were intercepted and detained by armed members of Tombstone-based Civil Homeland Defense. Such encounters with private groups patrolling the border are fraught with the potential for violence, the Mexican government said through its consul in Douglas, Miguel Escobar Valdez. The request for an inquiry comes as a new group announces plans to launch armed patrols along the Arizona-Mexico border. In the incident prompting the consul's complaint, eight members of Civil Homeland Defense detained 29 people at gunpoint on Bureau of Land Management land on Aug. 1. Group founder Chris Simcox was one of the people on patrol, according to a Sheriff's Department report. Holding a person at gunpoint is a felony crime, the report stated, but because none of those detained would testify, the Sheriff's Department could not press charges, said Sheriff Larry Dever. "You can't prosecute on anecdotal information, you have to have proof," he said. Five of the illegal entrants later told Escobar they were intimidated, felt threatened and that one member of the group waved and pointed a gun at them. Escobar said the refusal so far of illegal entrants to pursue criminal charges allows groups like Civil Homeland Defense to hold people against their will. Simcox, who is also the publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper, confirmed the encounter and detention. But he said no one brandished weapons during the encounter nor did they threaten or intimidate the illegal entrants. "It was just at dusk, and no one pulled a gun on anyone, we never have and never do, especially with a group of women and children." He said the group voluntarily sat down while members of Simcox's patrol offered them water and first aid and "we assured them we meant them no harm." He said members of his group have cooperated with the Sheriff's Department's investigation, and he is confident nothing will come of the case. "The only thing we can figure is that it was dark enough that they may have mistaken our walkie-talkies for guns," he said. Encounters between illegal border crossers and self-appointed border patrollers might increase along the Arizona-Mexico border because a Missouri-based group called U.S. Special Service claims it's going to bring "a small army" of volunteers to carry out their stated mission of "fighting terrorism, suppressing invasion and insurrection." The group is reacting to a highly publicized arrest by the Yuma County Sheriff's Department of two men in a July 31 incident in which they allegedly detained six illegal border crossers in the community of Gadsden. Officials said the pair brandished weapons and handcuffed members of the group, including three children. Matthew Paul Hoffman, 23, of Yuma, and Alexander Dumas, of California, remain in custody. Each is charged with six counts of aggravated assault and five counts of unlawful imprisonment, said Lt. Eben Bratcher, a spokesman for the Yuma County Sheriff's Department. "They used weapons and handcuffed children," he said. "This case has nothing to do with illegal immigration. Our arrest is based entirely on the fact that these people had handguns pointed at them and they were handcuffed. That's a violation of Arizona revised statutes and we arrest people for that." Keith French, who heads U.S. Special Service, said his group will be assisting Hoffman and Dumas in fighting the charges as well as filing civil and criminal claims against Yuma County officials. French said he has been in close contact with Texas-based Ranch Rescue founder Jack Foote, and with Chris Simcox's group and that both organizations have expressed support for his plans. Meanwhile, a volunteer for an illegal entrants' advocacy group, said it's going to continue its push to protect the rights of illegal border crossers by targeting the pocketbooks of border patrol groups. Border Action Network has turned to radio stations in southern Mexico to spread the message that if a person is accosted by an armed vigilante, they need to enter a formal complaint and are entitled to file a civil lawsuit against their captor.

*****************

I find this fucking funny, the Mexicans shoot on sight illegal immigrants
entering their country from El Salvador, but when the Gringos do it,
it's a "violation of their rights"

[Darth Fanboy]

To Mexico: If you dont want your citizens treated so badly then patrol the fucking border yourself, these people dont have any right to be in the country and they shouldnt expect special treatment if they try.

To the guy who thinks california isn't getting in more people: Areas in So Cal are expanding quite a bit, especially San Diego and Orange counties.

[Howedar]

Good for those guys.

[The Yosemite Bear]

*Ships in Slaves via Russian Mafia & Triad Gang Channels*
*Ships in UVF & IRA terrorists into Burnet & Shep's home state*

Yup, watching mexico sure is keeping all of your borders safe from all illegal immegration.