U.S. 'Minutemen' target Canadian border

WASHINGTON (AP) - A civilian patrol group that has been monitoring the Mexican border for illegal immigrants wants to expand its mission to the Canadian border, organizers said Tuesday. Minuteman Project leaders said their volunteers alerted U.S. authorities to more than 330 cases this month of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States across a 37-kilometre stretch of Arizona's southern border.

Now they plan to extend their patrol along the rest of the border with Mexico and are helping organize similar efforts in four states that neighbour Canada.

"In the absence of the federal government doing its mandated duty to secure our borders, we will pick up the slack. Reluctantly," said Chris Simcox, a Minuteman co-organizer who also operates Civil Homeland Defense, another Arizona group that monitors illegal immigration.

"We shouldn't have to be doing this," Simcox said in Washington, where he was to meet with legislators Wednesday.

"But at this point, we will continue to grow this operation - also to the northern border."

Simcox offered no timeline to indicate when the Canadian border patrol might begin its rounds in Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota and Vermont. He said he hopes to start patrols by June near San Diego, Calif., on the Mexican border at Tijuana and along the rest of the border with Mexico by October.

A spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol did not return a call for comment Tuesday.

"We're not supportive of vigilantes," said Dan Whiting, spokesman for U.S. Senator Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican.

"We can empathize with the need for border security but we need to do it the right way."

Several hundred Minuteman volunteers, some of them armed, were not allowed to detain illegal border-crossers spotted during their April patrol. Immigration advocates and U.S. authorities have complained about the volunteers. President George W. Bush said he opposes vigilantes, because the U.S. Border Patrol is meant to enforce border security.

More than one-half of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants apprehended in the United States last year entered at the Mexico-Arizona border.

The U.S. border with Canada is twice as long as the border with Mexico and is known as the longest undefended border in the world. U.S. Customs officials caught a man with explosives trying to enter Washington state from Canada in December 1999 in what has become known as the millennium terror plot.

The Minuteman organizers estimated it would take $4 billion and two years to secure the Mexico border and $8 billion and three years on the Canada border. They suggested the U.S. government supplement border patrol agents with military or National Guard troops.

source: http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005/04/21/1007411-cp.html

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