Fwd: AZMEX Border 18-12-2002

Hi Chris

see if this works for you

will try couple more also 

thx

Begin forwarded message:

From: Landis Aden <landisaden@cox.net>

Date: March 16, 2011 4:23:06 PM MST

To: AZMEX BLOG <azmexasrpa.landis@blogger.com>

Subject: Fwd: AZMEX Border 18-12-2002

Begin forwarded message:

From: Landis Aden <landisaden@cox.net>

Date: March 16, 2011 4:11:21 PM MST

To: AZMEX <azmex@asrpa.com>

Subject: AZMEX Border 18-12-2002

From: Landis Aden <landisaden@cox.net>

Date: Wed Dec 18, 2002  11:07:31 AM America/Phoenix

To: Act List <hotline@asrpa.com>

Subject: az mex border 18 dec 2002

Note:  This issues continues to grow.  

One of the few things the federal govt. is required to do, it has failed completely.

Private property and RKBA issues directly involved.

On the part of the media, fact checking is a lost art, or not even a concept.

Also, I have some spanish media on this that I can fax.

The last migrant shooting incident I am aware of, is short of details,

but all involved were from south of the border.

Thx

Landis

         

Group slams border 'vigilante' groups

Decries militias as racist

Hernán Rozemberg

The Arizona Republic

Dec. 18, 2002 12:00 AM

Special report

• More about border security >> 

Arizona has become a fertile ground for outside vigilantes who are using national security concerns as an excuse to push their racist and anti-immigrant agenda and break numerous state laws, a human rights group warns in a report to be released today.

"There's more than enough evidence, besides a moral imperative, to stop these groups," said Jennifer Allen, co-director of the Border Action Network. "People have already been killed, and it's only going to get worse."

The Tucson-based group will unveil the report at a news conference in Phoenix and deliver it to Gov.-elect Janet Napolitano. The group hopes she will be convinced to ask for state and federal investigations into the civilian organizations that have formed in the past two years.

The report comes in response to the increasing number of residents patrolling the border on their own, trying to stop illegal immigration. Two immigrants were killed in Red Rock, and eight have been found dead in the West Valley since June. Authorities initially suspected vigilantes were responsible in both cases, but have since discarded the theory in the Red Rock investigation. None of the killings has been solved.

Border Action Network was formed in 1999 as the Southwest Alliance to Resist Militarization, an informal grass-roots border issues watchdog. 

One of the 50-member group's main accomplishments was leading the effort this year to prevent construction of privately run prisons in Arizona meant to hold only illegal immigrants, Allen said.

The report says investigators should look into possible state land lease violations by border ranchers, illegal citizens' arrests, some involving physical attacks on immigrants being made on public roads, and the rash of migrant shootings.

But the groups criticized in the report say they resent not only the allegations but also the "vigilante" label itself, saying it incorrectly and unfairly characterizes them as lawbreakers.

"We're not even enforcing laws, we're just there as a deterrent," said Rob Krott, who came to Arizona in October with Texas-based Ranch Rescue, which bills itself as a protector of private ranchers seeking help chasing migrants and drug runners from their property.

"It's not about racism or vigilantism. It's about property rights," Krott said.

The Border Action Network report to be released today, titled "Hate or Heroism: Vigilantes on the Arizona-Mexico Border," accuses groups such as American Border Patrol in Sierra Vista, a high-tech outfit that tracks illegal border crossers, of being a local front for national White supremacist, neo-Nazi groups. 

The report says such groups provide funding to local vigilante groups, but no specific amounts are given.

Other cited in the report as vigilantes: Ranch Rescue; Civil Homeland Defense, a still-forming militia in Tombstone led by California native Chris Simcox, now owner of the local newspaper; and Roger and Donald Barnett, who for years have detained illegal border crossers on their Douglas ranch, which the report says is mostly land leased from the state.

The report relies on a four-month investigation conducted by the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

Heidi Beirich, who did the investigation for the center, said that American Border Patrol's leader, Glenn Spencer, first established himself as a major player in anti-immigrant circles in California as founder of American Patrol/Voices of Citizens Together.

That organization earned the "hate group" label, Beirich said, while several others listed in the Border Action Network report are being closely watched.

"The only locals are the Barnetts. Everybody else seems to be an outsider, targeting Arizona as the ideal place for their racist agendas," Beirich said in an interview.

Spencer said Tuesday he had not seen the report, but that he has heard similar criticisms before. He dismissed as lies the accusations that he has links to racist organizations.

"Where's the evidence? All we do is go out and document what's going on at the border," he said. He said he provides most of the funding for American Border Patrol, noting "a couple of foundations might help a little bit," but he declined to name them.

Allen, who co-wrote the Border Action Network's report, said residents the organization interviewed in Cochise County oppose vigilantes, but they're just afraid to say it, fearing retaliation. The organization talked to about 150 people in the Douglas area.

The Cochise County Board of Supervisors last month passed a resolution discouraging vigilantism. Board Chairman Pat Call did an informal survey, and 80 of 100 respondents said they oppose civilian militias, county spokeswoman Karla Jensen said.

end