A Minuteman's experience

For those who are using the slanderous charge of racism against Latinos, I have placed in bold the most relevant term that you are missing or willfully ignoring.

Much has been said about the American citizens who spent time at our southern border observing and reporting illegal aliens. The typical knee jerk response spanned the political spectrum and included President Bush and Condaleeza Rice referring to the Minutemen as vigilantes. While I respect and admire both her and the President, they were wrong and it was irresponsible for them to characterize decent Americans in that fashion. Would this administration also declare neighborhood watch programs to be merely vigilante gangs?

An article in the Houston Chronicle WITHIN BOUNDS is the experience of one of the Minutemen.

A common misconception about illegal aliens is that they are all peasants looking for work to support their families. Not so. Most of the 335 apprehensions resulting from reports by the Minutemen were of drug smugglers, men in their late teens to early 20s dressed in black and wearing cut-out black stocking caps.

If only it were about jobs. But for those Americans living on the border it can be quite dangerous.

I spoke with Belinda, a single mother who allowed us to use her home and yard for observation. Every day about 5:30 p.m., as she came home from work with her young daughter, she was confronted by a group of smugglers making a drop to a car parked in her driveway.

Out of fear for her safety, Belinda began carrying a handgun and routinely cleared her own home before bringing her daughter in for the evening. She thanked us profusely for helping her to reclaim her yard, and every night she fed us a hot meal.

Those who live near the border experience a lack of security that should concern all of us. If only the naysayers cared as much for American children as they claim to do for those of illegal aliens.

It's no way to live. This courageous woman (Carol - a local orgainzer), who brought us food and coffee for protecting her neighborhood, packs a revolver because a mother and daughter were recently assaulted by an illegal alien while they waited for a school bus in her neighborhood in Hereford. Another family related to me that illegal aliens regularly try to get on the school bus in Naco.

The abuse of American citizens that occurs daily near the border with Mexico and the destructive effect of drug smuggling on individuals, families and society should outrage all Americans. Those who extol the virtues of an open border should have to live there. In fact, some do, the small percentage of drug dealers, drug users and their protectors (lawyers, politicians and businessmen), who profit from it all.

I imagine some would say that is about what many experience in inner city ghettos. As if that is a reasonable response. If they support greater enforcement of the law against gangs in American cities than they have no room to complain against doing the same on our borders with regard to illegal aliens. Now for those who are against law enforcement in either case, get back to me when you are thinking rationally.

Perhaps Vincent Fox, for all his and his American cheerleaders complaining about the Minutemen, would be happy if we applied the same laws and enforcement methods to illegal aliens as would be applied in his country. After all, what's good for the goose...

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