Perry Gains Support Of Minutemen He Once Opposed

February 24, 2010
KERA - PBS
by Shelly Kofler

Governor Rick Perry sought to sew up his conservative credentials Wednesday as he announced an endorsement by the Minutemen. The Minutemen are volunteers who patrol the US-Mexican border in an effort to stop illegal immigration and smuggling.

Perry didn't support the group five years ago, but says he now backs the Minutemen because he's convinced their patrols operate within the law.

Perry: We wanted to make sure as they were being formulated in their early days that these weren't vigilante groups, that these weren't individuals that were going out and being armed and taking laws into their own hands. They proved to be what they said they'd be: another set of eyes in the neighborhood.

Perry and the Minutemen still differ on the need for a physical fence along the border. Perry says a wall from Brownsville to El Paso is not "doable." Perry supports patrolling the border with technology. Minuteman Founder Jim Gilchrist says he'll support a wall until Congress provides enough personnel to prevent border violence and crime.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kera/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1616477/North.Texas/Perry.Gains.Support.Of.Minutemen.He.Once.Opposed

Meeting place sealed off: Border patrol agents prohibit access to Friendship Park

February 22, 2009
San Diego Union Tribune
By Penni Crabtree

SOUTH COUNTY — In the end, immigration activists never made it to the site of yesterday's planned demonstration, a plaza dubbed Friendship Park that sits on a bluff overlooking the ocean at Border Field State Park.

For the first time, Border Patrol agents formally sealed off access on the U.S. side to the plaza, for years a popular meeting place on the U.S.-Mexico border for families to visit through the fence.

The Department of Homeland Security announced late last year that it will prohibit all public access to the park where a secondary wall is under construction. Since then, the plaza has become a symbolic touchstone for those who debate border enforcement policies.

Until recently, federal officials had planned to have a gate in the secondary fence that would have allowed people on either side to visit.

“This is a treasured piece of the San Diego landscape where people meet for peaceful reasons,” said John Fanestil, executive director of the Foundation for Change, a nonprofit social-justice group involved in immigration issues. “The fencing will change that landscape.”

In recent weeks, Fanestil and others formed the Friends of Friendship Park Coalition to save the park and have received support from elected officials, including Reps. Bob Filner and Susan Davis, both San Diego Democrats. Filner, Davis and other federal lawmakers from border states sent a Feb. 8 letter to President Barack Obama asking him to revisit the construction plans.

Yesterday, about 125 park supporters marched the mile or so on muddy roads and along the beach to Friendship Park. A handful of people opposed to illegal immigration also were there.

A phalanx of Border Patrol agents in off-road vehicles blocked access to the plaza entrance, causing demonstrators on both sides of the issue to gather below the bluff.

The spot was not without poignant symbolism, a strip of beach pierced with metal pilings that form the existing border fence, which runs into the ocean for a few feet before giving way. A child could easily swim between the two countries.

On the south side of the pilings, Mexican families strolled on the beach, bought roasted ears of corn from a vendor and leaned against the fence to watch happenings on the other side.

On the north side of the pilings, Friendship Park supporters held an ecumenical religious service, complete with a choir. Opponents of illegal immigration tried to disrupt it with a siren-blasting bullhorn and shouted slogans such as, “Go home, illegals!”

One wore a cap with the logo of the Minutemen, an anti-illegal-immigration group.

Since the ban on public access to Friendship Park was declared, a few dozen immigration activists have continued to gather there weekly to hold religious services and other activities.

Yesterday, two activists were detained and later released without charge after they tried to approach the fence against orders from Border Patrol agents.

“This is the first day they've chosen to enforce the ban on public access,” Fanestil said. “Before, they tolerated our presence. Clearly they will tolerate us no more.”

Fanestil said he and other members of the park coalition plan to meet and discuss plans for future park actions.

Mark Endicott, public-affairs officer for the U.S. Border Patrol, said no public access will be authorized between the primary and secondary border fences.

The decision to impose the ban is “based on our border security mission and to assure the safety of border agents and the public,” he said.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/feb/22/1m22park23590-meeting-place-sealed/

The Nativists Are Restless

New York Times Editorial
January 31, 2009

The relentlessly harsh Republican campaign against immigrants has always hidden a streak of racialist extremism. Now after several high-water years, the Republican tide has gone out, leaving exposed the nativism of fringe right-wingers clinging to what they hope will be a wedge issue.

Last week at the National Press Club in Washington, a group seeking to speak for the future of the Republican Party declared that its November defeats in Congressional races stemmed not from having been too hard on foreigners, but too soft.

The group, the American Cause, released a report arguing that anti-immigration absolutism was still the solution for the party’s deep electoral woes, actual voting results notwithstanding. Rather than “pander to pro-amnesty Hispanics and swing voters,” as President Bush and Karl Rove once tried to do, the report’s author, Marcus Epstein, urged Republicans to double down on their efforts to run on schemes to seal the border and drive immigrants out.

This is nonsense, of course. For years Americans have rejected the cruelty of enforcement-only regimes and Latino-bashing, in opinion surveys and at the polls. In House and Senate races in 2008 and 2006, “anti- amnesty” hard-liners consistently lost to candidates who proposed comprehensive reform solutions. The wedge did not work for single-issue xenophobes like Lou Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton, Pa., or the former Arizona Congressman J. D. Hayworth. Nor did it help any of the Republican presidential candidates trying to defeat the party’s best-known voice of immigration moderation, John McCain, for the nomination.

Americans want immigration solved, and they realize that mass deportations will not do that. When you add the unprecedented engagement of growing numbers of Latino voters in 2008, it becomes clear that the nativist path is the path to permanent political irrelevance. Unless you can find a way to get rid of all the Latinos.

What was perhaps more notable than the report itself was the team that delivered it. It included Bay Buchanan, former adviser to Representative Tom Tancredo and sister of Pat, who founded the American Cause and wrote “State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America.” She was joined by James Pinkerton, an essayist and Fox News contributor who, as an aide to the first President Bush, took credit for the racist Willie Horton ads run against Michael Dukakis.

So far, so foul. But even more telling was the presence of Peter Brimelow, a former Forbes editor and founder of Vdare.com, an extremist anti-immigration Web site. It is named for Virginia Dare, the first white baby born in the English colonies, which tells you most of what you need to know. The site is worth a visit. There you can read Mr. Brimelow’s and Mr. Buchanan’s musings about racial dilution and the perils facing white people, and gems like this from Mr. Epstein:

“Diversity can be good in moderation — if what is being brought in is desirable. Most Americans don’t mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes, or a few Mariachi dancers — as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture.”

It is easy to mock white-supremacist views as pathetic and to assume that nativism in the age of Obama is on the way out. The country has, of course, made considerable progress since the days of Know-Nothings and the Klan. But racism has a nasty habit of never going away, no matter how much we may want it to, and thus the perpetual need for vigilance.

It is all around us. Much was made of the Republican mailing of the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro,” but the same notorious CD included “The Star Spanglish Banner,” a puerile bit of Latino-baiting. It is easily found on YouTube. Google the words “Bill O’Reilly” and “white, Christian male power structure” for another YouTube taste of the Fox News host assailing the immigration views of “the far left” (including The Times) as racially traitorous.

And it takes only a cursory look at a worsening economic climate and grim national mood to realize that history is always threatening to repeat itself. Last week on Long Island, the authorities in Suffolk County unsealed new indictments against a group of teenage boys accused in a murderous attack against an Ecuadorean immigrant, Marcelo Lucero. Since that crime last year, many more victims have come forward with stories of assaults in or near the same town, Patchogue. The police in that suburb seem to have made a habit of ignoring a long and escalating trail of attacks against immigrant men, until the hatred rose up and spilled over one night, fatally.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01sun1.html

MINUTEMEN PRAISE REPUBLICAN PLATFORM

Borderfire Report
September 6, 2008

(While the Borderfire Report barely achieves the level of poorly crafted propaganda, much less objective news, many politicians pander to them and the xenophobia that they represent.)

Chris Simcox Affirms Tough GOP Stance on Border SecuritySt. Paul, MN--Today Chris Simcox, President of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, offered public praise for the 2008 Republican Party Platform’s tough stance on illegal immigration and its advocacy for strong border security.

The GOP Platform planks on these vital issues begin:

"In an age of terrorism, drug cartels, and criminal gangs, allowing millions of unidentified persons to enter and remain in this country poses grave risks to the sovereignty of the United States and the security of its people. We simply must be able to track who is entering and leaving our country. Our determination to uphold the rule of law begins with more effective enforcement, giving our agents the tools and resources they need to protect our sovereignty, completing the border fence quickly and securing the borders, and employing complementary strategies to secure our ports of entry. Experience shows that enforcement of existing laws is effective in reducing and reversing illegal immigration."

Detailing his support of the GOP Platform, Simcox explained, "The Minutemen have been fighting to secure our borders for more than 5 years now, and it’s a pleasure to finally see our work bear fruit in the official Republican Party policy platform statements. And it’s obviously no accident. In those 5 years, we’ve aided the U.S. Border Patrol in the capture of tens of thousands of would-be illegal alien intruders. And further, we’ve been sounding the alarm on our nation’s vulnerability at the borders to criminal elements flooding into our neighborhoods and communities. And the American people have understood and echoed our call for effective border security."

Clearly 80% of voters agree that the next President must secure our borders. And we’re very pleased to see that the leaders of the state delegations to the GOP Convention stood firm in representing the grassroots of their party by insisting that the Platform Committee take a firm stance on this issue. In fact, the Platform reflects some of the same language we’ve used in our Minuteman Presidential Pledge on Border Security, which we publicly unveiled last week. The only question left unanswered is whether the next President of the United States will hear the collective voice of the American people and once and finally secure our borders,” continued Simcox.

Simcox is joined by national leaders in renewing the call for a Presidential Pledge at the Republican National Convention this week. To date, several minor party candidates have already agreed to sign the MCDC pledge to secure the borders, enforce the laws and reduce illegal immigration.