Tancredo Speech Excerpts from Minuteman Rally

Be sure to visit our blog, where you can express your opinions at:
http://tancredo.house.gov/

Tancredo Speech Excerpts from Minutemen Rally

TOMBSTONE, AZ - "I am here today to say thank you on behalf of millions of Americans who can't be here with you today. You have the courage to say to the government of the United States, 'Do your duty! Protect our borders! Protect our communities! Protect our families! Protect our jobs!' You are good citizens who ask only that our laws be enforced. When did that become a radical idea? If the federal government were doing its job, if our elected officials were fulfilling their constitutional duties, you wouldn't be here."

"Two days ago the government announced that 500 additional agents will be added to the ranks of the Border Patrol in Arizona. A year ago they came down here and held a big press conference on the Air Force base at Tucson and bragged that they were adding 250 new agents and new aircraft. What they didn't tell you was that most of those new resources were temporary, and on Sept. 30th they evaporated. We need to tell those people that when the border region is bleeding to death, it needs a tourniquet, not band-aids!"

"Some people say that we are hypocrites when we protest the open borders because people are coming for jobs and we should ask for a crackdown on the employers who hire illegal aliens. There is no hypocrisy here. We need both! We will support any new proposal for stiffer penalties and more effective law enforcement against employers of illegal aliens. The only hypocrisy in this national debate comes form those who offer amnesty to illegal aliens in the name of better law enforcement and border security. That is a Clintonesque way of simply redefining the problem. Who honestly believes that the next amnesty will be the 'last amnesty'? Who can ask the American people with a straight face to accept it as the solution?"

"You are here as a kind of neighborhood watch program to help the Border Patrol spot illegal aliens as they enter our country. A year ago in the month of April, in only one month, over 64,000 illegal aliens were apprehended here in the Tucson sector. But you are not here to help the Border Patrol apprehend them. You must not try to stop these interlopers if the Border Patrol does not come to get them. The media are here to observe and report, so let them tell the story of how many trespassers are not caught."

"Obey the rules the organizers have set down for you. Observe and report what you see, but do not chase anyone, and do not try to apprehend anyone. Your job is that of a Witness, a witness to the truth, a truth that can no longer be hidden from the American people. Our borders are wide open. That must be changed. You are here to hasten that change. May God bless you for your courage, and when you finish the job here, bring this same message to Washington. Together we can awaken America and secure our borders!"

# # # #

*Tancredo to Keynote Minutemen Rally

WASHINGTON, DC - Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) today announced that he has accepted an invitation from James Gilchrist to deliver the keynote address at the April 1 rally in Tombstone, AZ to kick off the month-long Minutemen protest against our open borders.

"I am going to Tombstone on Friday to tell those good citizens they are heroes, not 'vigilantes,' and that tens of millions of Americans are there with them in spirit," said Tancredo.

"The Minutemen are in Arizona as a kind of Neighborhood Watch program to help the Border Patrol spot illegal aliens as they enter our country. A year ago in the month of April, in only one month, over 64,000 illegal aliens were apprehended in the Tucson sector," Tancredo explained.

Tancredo says he plans to tell the Minutemen, "You are here to send a message to Washington, DC. Poll after poll tells anyone who will listen that 80% of the American people want our borders secured against illegal entry. If politicians can't read the polls, maybe they can read our lips: secure our borders now!"

# # # #

****************************************************

TOP NEWS:

*Border volunteers basking in attention

Susan Carroll
Republic Tucson Bureau
Apr. 2, 2005 12:00 AM

TOMBSTONE - Organizers of a monthlong civilian border patrol effort claimed victory on the first day, basking in national media attention even before the volunteers fan out to detect undocumented immigrants crossing the border.

"We have already accomplished our goal a hundredfold," Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant and project organizer, said as more than 100 members of the media jostled and jockeyed for position outside a registration building on Friday morning. "We've got our message out to the American public."

Gilchrist estimated the number of media at 100 to 120. He claimed to have four times as many volunteers registering in Tombstone to participate in patrols to detect undocumented immigrants in the San Pedro Valley, a bustling smuggling corridor, and report them to the U.S. Border Patrol.

But there was no way to independently verify the number of volunteers, who were registered in two buildings.

The turnout fell far short of the 1,000 hyped before the event, although Gilchrist said more volunteers are expected throughout the month.

On the first day of the project, the media showed up en masse, with satellite trucks lining the streets of this historic town in Cochise County, an illegal-immigration epicenter that accounted for 1 in 5 of the 1.1 million arrests along the Southwestern border last year.

Law enforcement officers dressed in cowboy hats and boots kept a close watch on volunteers, and counterprotesters gathered outside the historic building across from City Hall. Some volunteers called the registration a "media circus," but others welcomed the publicity, waving flags and passing out commemorative patches.

"We have already succeeded," one of the project's main organizers, Chris Simcox, declared at a news conference with Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

The monthlong series of protests and patrols is billed as a push to pressure politicians for immigration reform and to draw attention to the Arizona-Mexico border, where ranchers have long complained the Border Patrol is understaffed. On Wednesday, top Border Patrol officials announced the addition of 534 agents but said it has nothing to do with the project and repeatedly denounced the project.

Marc Cooper, a senior fellow with the Institute for Justice and Journalism at the University of Southern California, said the project "caught a wave" of positive press, particularly with popular, conservative cable shows.

"The spectacle we're seeing today has been primarily driven by the media," he said, adding that it received an incredibly disproportionate amount of coverage, even from mainstream press. "There's a sexy story here, and the media bit the hook."

Paul Charlton, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, criticized the media for reporting the organizers' claims that more than 1,000 volunteers planned to turn out for the monthlong event, without substantiating the numbers. The organizers of the Minuteman Project repeatedly declined to provide a membership list to the media, citing privacy concerns.

Charlton said Simcox has a history of hyping events to the media, although it's too early to tell what will happen with the Minuteman Project.

When Simcox founded the organization Civil Homeland Defense in Tombstone in December 2002, he told the media he would have 600 volunteers inducted into a training exercise, but only a handful showed up, Charlton said. In January 2003, Simcox promoted a similar event but predicted a more modest turnout of 20 to 30 volunteers. Charlton said that on the day of the event the local media reported that two volunteers turned out, fewer than the number of journalists.

"If the past were a prologue, you could expect very few people," Charlton said. "The exception here is that this event has received such an extraordinary amount of media publicity that it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Steve Rendall, a senior analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, said radio talk shows have devoted a substantial amount of airtime to anti-illegal immigration advocates for more than a decade, but the movement is now making it into more mainstream media, driven by conservative cable shows. He said the hosts asked "softball questions" and basically had the project's spokesmen on unopposed.

"It was basically a frictionless public-relations outing for the Minuteman Project," he said.

Ben Pachano, who came down from Tucson to protest the project, said the media have been manipulated and allow spokesmen for the project to "frame the rhetoric" for the immigration debate.

"They're racists, using rhetoric designed to whip up fear," he said.

Jack Treese, a 59-year-old Minuteman volunteer from Simi Valley, Calif., said the media work toward the project's main goal, which is to pressure politicians to reform U.S. immigration policy and secure the border.

"And I'm glad they're here because what really bothers me is the idea of someone coming down here to shoot at us, and if the media's here, maybe that will prevent that."

*Minutemen Prepare to Lay Down the Law

Civilian border patrols rally troops in Arizona. And they're making their presence known.

By David Kelly
Los Times Staff Writer
April 2, 2005
TOMBSTONE, Ariz. - They came by the hundreds Friday, men and women from across the nation, hearts brimming with righteous anger, determined to staunch the flow of illegal immigration.

Some wore pistols slung low on their hips. Others walked the dusty streets in leather cowboy hats, wearing buttons that read: "Undocumented Border Patrol Agent." There were pilots, window washers, private investigators and exterminators.

These are the new Minutemen. And for the next month, they will patrol 23 miles of desert here in southeast Arizona, the busiest corridor for illegal immigrants in the nation with about 500,000 arrests last year.

"We have an illegal invasion of our country going on now that is affecting our schools, our healthcare system and our society in general," said volunteer Joe McCutchen, 73, of Fort Smith, Ark. "No society can sustain this."

The Minutemen's presence here has set off protests from immigrant-rights groups and drew a handful of counter-demonstrators Friday. The Mexican government has increased its troop strength along the border, and President Vicente Fox has called on the American government to protect illegal immigrants coming across the desert.

President Bush outraged many of the volunteers here by calling them vigilantes. They responded by calling Bush the co-president of Mexico and a leader who has failed his responsibility to secure the country's borders.

At a rally Friday in an airy building not far from the infamous OK Corral, politicians and activists lambasted Bush and vowed not to be intimidated.

"Since when did actually enforcing the laws of the land become a radical idea?" asked Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). "If you don't know who is coming across your borders and for what purpose, then you cannot call yourself a nation."

The 200 or so volunteers roared their approval, a few shouting: "Tancredo for president!"

Conservative political pundit Bay Buchanan chipped in. "Mr. President, you have failed us, you have failed our children, you have failed those communities suffering from drugs coming across the border," she said. "Mr. President, you have failed America!"

Outside the hall, demonstrators pounded pots and pans with spoons, trying to drown out the rally. There were dancers in traditional Aztec dress carrying signs calling the Minutemen racists. Monitors in red and white shirts from the American Civil Liberties Union have organized themselves into groups that will follow the civilian patrols that officially begin Monday.

"We will stay about 50 to 100 yards behind them to deter the use of violence and document any illegal activity," said Ray Ybarra of the Arizona ACLU.

The number of Minutemen who assembled here Friday was not as great as had been expected. James Gilchrist, the Orange County activist who organized the event, had predicted at least 1,000 would show up.

"They will be coming throughout the month, and not all on the first day," he said.

Gilchrist emphasized to his troops that no one was authorized to touch or detain any illegal immigrant, but that they should report them to the Border Patrol - which has said it doesn't want the help. "The rules of engagement are that there is no engagement," Gilchrist said.

Gilchrist, a 58-year-old Vietnam veteran and retired accountant from Aliso Viejo, said that white supremacist groups such as the Aryan Nations, which urged people to volunteer for the Minutemen, were not welcome.

"I have found in the last three months that hate groups come in all colors," Gilchrist said, explaining he had been threatened by a Latino gang and various individuals. "I have had ... probably 12 actual death threats."

Gilchrist said the fact that the U.S. government announced this week the addition of 500 border patrol agents here showed that his effort was already paying off.

"We know we are not a panacea, that we are not going to change this all in 30 days," he said. "But we have already accomplished our goal a hundred-fold in getting the media out here and getting the message out."

The number of media members here Friday to cover the volunteer border patrols nearly outnumbered the Minutemen. Reporters from around the world descended on Tombstone, population 4,800. Along with journalists came some filmmakers working on documentaries about the U.S.-Mexican border.

Chris Simcox, editor of the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper and a key organizer of the event, warned participants that they would be under enormous scrutiny. "The media has created this frenzy and this monster," he said. "They are looking for Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster - the vigilante. But they aren't going to find it. The media will be watching everything we do. We are going to be held accountable to the letter of the law. You must abide by every law or you will not succeed."

The Minutemen don't fit neatly into any stereotype. Some wore fatigues and carried military-issue Meals Ready to Eat. Others resembled suburbanites out for a weekend adventure. A few toted handguns.

Buddy Watson, a former prison guard, carried a .40-caliber pistol. He said he had reread the Constitution before coming here from Bentonville, Ark., to make sure he didn't violate anybody's rights.

"We have been threatened, so I am carrying a gun," he said. "I have no intention of having to use it."

Gilchrist said the Minutemen had been threatened by MS-13, a Central American street gang.

Bill Davis, 66, who kills coyotes for a living, worried about the number of guns he saw.

"The ACLU is praying ... that someone gets wacky out here," the Minuteman volunteer said. "They hope some loose cannon lets the air out of somebody. And I see people walking around here with guns strapped on when there is no need for it."

Davis expects to be leading an eight-person patrol in the desert in the days ahead, yet he has some trepidation.

He spends every day tracking animals in the barren landscape here. He routinely comes across illegal immigrants and calls in the Border Patrol.

"I go out every day of the year, but some of these guys are businessmen," he said. "They shouldn't be carrying a box of rocks, let alone a gun."

************************************************************************

CONGRESS THIS WEEK:

************************************************************************

-To view the legislative calendar and schedule for the week, please

visit http://majoritywhip.house.gov/calendar.asp.

-To investigate the legislative priorities for Second Session of the

108th Congress, please visit www.gop.gov .

-To search for a specific bill in Congress, please visit

http:/www./thomas