Immigration Clearinghouse

Long Island Wins just published it’s second in a series of three exposes’ about the extremist vigilantes who call themselves Minutemen! (no doubt a reference to their bedroom functionality)

Here’s a few lines from the report.

The Minutemen became the iconic symbol of the anti-immigrant movement in 2005. Depicted by conservative media as selfless heroes assuming the patriotic mantel of our forefathers at Lexington and Concord, their meager numbers and insignificant accomplishments were greatly magnified by the press. ……….

Some media outlets went beyond merely reporting the Minuteman line. When Lou Dobbs was criticized by the Wall Street Journal for placing his program in the service of the Minutemen, he embraced the allegations on a December 2005 show: “I just want to be clear to the Journal and to this audience: I support the Minuteman Project and the fine Americans who make it up in all they’ve accomplished, fully, relentlessly, and proudly.” And people like Sean Hannity could well have made the same affirmation………..

Simcox himself made statements during the Spring 2005 deployment that brought his own claims of racial color-blindness into question. For example, in a June 2005 documentary he tells a reporter that he has two goals. First, as one would expect, the militarization of the southern border. But his second goal has nothing to do with illegal immigration. After the border is militarized, he says “then I want a two-year moratorium on any immigration to this country from Mexico”. Since that moratorium would be directed against legal immigration, it is obvious that his problem was less to do with illegal immigrants, and more to do with Mexicans…………

n July 2005, the California Minutemen, numbering less than 100 members, began a deployment in Campo, California, along the border. They were confronted by a large and unruly group of protestors. The protestors tried to disrupt Minutemen activites and yelled insults at the Minutemen. After Minutemen threatened to kill protestors, the situation turned potentially deadly. Jim Gilchrist put out a nationwide “emergency call for reinforcements in Campo”. The call to arms included the following: “Be warned that roving gangs of belligerent, death-threatening, anti-American adversaries engaging the California Minutemen WILL physically attack you if they outnumber you. I repeat, they WILL physically attack you…Stay in groups and stay LEGALLY armed.”

This pattern of denying a connection to a splinter Minuteman group while at the same time providing support would be repeated later in the Minuteman Project’s association with Shawna Forde and Minuteman American Defense. On the one had, Gilchrist denies that she was anything more than a rogue using Minuteman as a cover for criminality. He and others like to point out that Minuteman American Defense is a separate organization, with a separate leadership. But he also has endorsed her work and as recently as June, 2009, the Minuteman Project was offering to put Minuteman volunteers under her command……………………..

“As supporters of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, we were disheartened to read … about questions and criticisms of Chris Simcox’s management of the organization…The truth is that no one except Mr. Simcox knows how much money has been donated and what it has been used for. So far, Mr. Simcox has been unable to come up with a good explanation — at least one that can be independently verified.”………

Sounds like some of the questions the minions of William Gheen should be asking about the 1/4 of a million dollars he raised last year, and to which he has not filed Federal FEC documents to cover!

Read the rest of this interesting series at Long Island Wins and the first part here.