Battle of border enforcers heats
up
By Ignacio Ibarra
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
One heads to the border armed with a video camera, a computer and a
portable satellite uplink. The other is there with a sidearm, a rifle
and an attitude.
Both of them say they're out to force the government to do a better job of protecting us from illegal border crossers.
But the wall of citizen border watchers each hopes to build has been breached by a growing feud over style and approach between Glenn Spencer's high-tech Sierra Vista-based American Border Patrol and Chris Simcox's Tombstone-based Civil Homeland Defense group - a self-proclaimed unorganized armed militia.
The reason for the public bickering? A recent "message to the world" Simcox issued with the warning: "Do not attempt to cross the border illegally; you will be considered an enemy of the state; if aggressors attempt to forcefully enter our country they will be repelled with force if necessary!"
Spencer - a 12-year veteran of the Proposition 187 and anti-illegal-immigration movements in California and creator of the widely popular Internet site AmericanPatrol.com - says that with statements like that, Simcox has attracted an "unsavory element." And that, he says, threatens the credibility of the anti-illegal-immigration movement Spencer has helped lead over the past decade.
Spencer said he's speaking out because the media continue to portray his group in the same light as Simcox's militia and Ranch Rescue, the Texas-based group that late last year seized several hundred pounds of marijuana during a heavily armed reconnaissance patrol in Santa Cruz County.
Spencer says he recently had a run-in with one of Simcox's volunteers that caused him to wonder about the stability and motivation of the people Simcox attracts. And this week - under a section of his Web site called the Rumor Mill - Spencer reported that Civil Homeland Defense volunteers had been seen drinking and firing weapons along the border with Mexico.
"It's called rabble rousing, isn't it?" Spencer said of the Simcox declaration, which was distributed to government officials and media contacts on both sides of the border last week at the start of the war with Iraq.
"For years we've been dealing with an issue of lawlessness and we've said repeatedly, 'What part of illegal don't they understand? What part of illegal doesn't Chris Simcox understand?' " Spencer said. "The purpose is to put pressure on the government, to have governmental institutions that are there to enforce the law, not to go out and threaten people."
Spencer, who says his efforts are aimed at documenting and reporting illegal immigrant activity, not confronting it with guns, said he's recently taken steps to avoid confusion by insisting that American Border Patrol volunteers belong either to his organization or Simcox's, but not both.
Simcox denies Spencer's allegations about drinking and shooting by his volunteers and attributes the dispute to "media envy" and sour grapes.
He said dwindling media attention and a perception that the high-tech gimmickry is ineffective have resulted in defections from American Border Patrol to his Civil Homeland Defense.
"Glenn Spencer isn't out taking the heat we're taking or seeing what we're seeing. He's only out once or twice a week and most of the time his high-tech stuff doesn't even work," said Simcox, who says members of his group have been on daily border patrols since the start of the war with Iraq. He said that in that time, they turned nearly 200 illegal border crossers over to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.
A spokesman for the agency said it has no record of any contact with Simcox or his volunteers. However, the agency receives many complaints from private citizens and they are not individually tracked, said Frank Amarillas, a spokesman for the agency's Tucson Sector.
"People make claims, we're not going to dispute them," Amarillas said.
Simcox said volunteers have been targeted recently by border crossers.
"We were shot at two weeks ago down by the San Pedro where we've been working. We've been pelted with rocks, we've encountered aggressive groups," Simcox said of the group's more recent border ventures.
"We're at war," Simcox said. And Mexico "should take that seriously."