Arizona Minutemen a Cautious Success

By Bill West

As the Minuteman Project on the Arizona border with Mexico nears its two-thirds mission milestone, passing without incident and claiming to have reported hundreds of illegal alien border crossers to the Border Patrol, and with the statistics reflecting a dramatic decrease in the number of illegal border crossings along the 20 mile stretch monitored by the citizen volunteers, the organization is touting the project a success�so far.

And, so far, it would be hard to argue otherwise. The facts seem to bear out that a large, motivated, disciplined, self-contained organization composed of ordinary American citizens managed to perform a fairly dramatic and risky task in a potentially dangerous environment and actually accomplished something good and did so without anyone getting hurt. And by doing so, demonstrated that certain Government officials were simply wrong. Wrong about their organization and wrong about what they were trying to do.

Hopefully, the remaining twelve days or so the Minutemen officially have on the Arizona border will continue as their first nineteen. They have already inspired thousands of other volunteers and there is a plan to expand this effort to other parts of the U.S. Mexican border in the fall. We�ll have to wait and see if the current enthusiasm plays out over the coming months. Even so, what has happened so far is remarkable.

The Minutemen have clearly shown that manpower on the border can have a drastic effect on reducing illegal border crossings. Prior intensive Border Patrol operations, like Operation Hold the Line, wherein there was a serious augmentation of agents in key border crossing areas have proven the same. Why then, do we not have a Border Patrol that is properly staffed? Or, in the alternative, why do we not seriously consider using National Guard or other military personnel to augment Border Patrol agents along certain critical border crossing areas? If citizen volunteers can man static observation posts and report border crossers, surely trained military personnel, such as Military Police, can do that and maybe even more. Perhaps even other Government alternatives, such as a Reserve Homeland Security Force, composed of retired law enforcement officer volunteers could be considered.

Beyond the immigration and border security issues in this, the Minuteman Project has reminded us of something else. While perhaps an initial reaction of some Americans was that a group of angry armed civilians is a recipe for disaster, the Minuteman Project thus far has proven those doomsayers wrong. In fact, as their namesake should remind us, it was angry armed civilians a couple hundred years ago that gave birth to something called the United States of America.

If the Minutemen go home the end of April, their project ending with no serious incidents, no one hurt and their point proven, apart from showing the Government some of what needs to be done on the border, they will have reminded the rest of us that in America, power still really does flow from the People to the government and not the other way around. That is even more important and something, perhaps, a lot of Government officials and civil servants need to remember. And, just maybe, it�s also time for some in the mainstream media to give more credit to the citizenry.

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