Word: minutemen
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...Minutemen could be heard before they were seen. First came the bullhorns barking "This is America, not Mexico" and "No work today. The Minutemen have arrived." Then the group of two dozen men and women, holding U.S. flags and cameras in their hands, turned the corner and started bearing down on Hispanic workers waiting for jobs outside the Macehualli day-labor center in northern Phoenix, Ariz. Sensing trouble, some took refuge behind the gates of the center, and others melted away down side streets. As the laborers fled, the protesters tried to take pictures of their faces. "This...
...campaign, Operation Spotlight, is a new--and some fear dangerous--tactic by the self-named Minutemen, the anti- illegal-immigrant group that in April began standing watch on the Arizona-Mexico border to intercept people crossing into the U.S. The group has caught few border jumpers but generated lots of attention for its cause and is now turning its focus in from the border, staging Operation Spotlight protests not only in Phoenix but also in the California cities of Laguna Beach, Lake Forest and San Bernardino as well as Herndon, Va. There are plans for demonstrations at day-labor centers...
...will be expanding these protests," says Jim Gilchrist, 56, a retired accountant who is a founder of the Minutemen. He is running for Congress in California, waging a single-issue campaign against illegal immigration. "We are even getting inquiries from countries like France and England...
With President George W. Bush's scheduled visit to the Southwest raising anew the issue of the porous border and with Congress planning to take up several bills in December to address the problem, the Minutemen's timing, at least, is deft. But vigilantism is a risky business, particularly when it carries an odor of race baiting. The more the tension builds, say the Minutemen's critics, the greater the risk that violence, avoided in Phoenix, could break out. "The Minutemen are getting stronger precisely because Bush and Congress are addressing immigration," says Tamar Jacoby, an immigration expert...
...kind of day-worker center that the Minutemen target is an unusual bureaucratic creation made possible by loopholes in the immigration and tax codes. Cities with big illegal-immigrant populations have been setting up such centers lately to lend some organization to what had been an underground marketplace. At the centers, laborers can drop in and earn from $7 to $10 an hour doing jobs such as construction and landscaping. The law does not require the day-labor centers to check the legal status of workers. It allows employers to hire them without informing federal and state agencies...