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What border residents think of migrants and Minutemen

DOUGLAS - To hear a Minuteman Project volunteer tell it, people are being robbed, raped and beaten by illegal entrants along this stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border. Ask California activists, and they'll tell you how Arizona has become the hate-state epicenter of the country. In the latest immigration debate, perception has become more damaging to this small border town than reality. And the people who live along this stretch of the border are getting a little tired of it all. "There's been people tied up and robbed; I talked to one guy who said he was robbed three different times," says Minuteman volunteer Freddy Puckett, a button that says "Kiss Me, I'm Ugly" pinned to his camouflage boonie hat. "People are scared to death out here," the Cochise resident says. There's little evidence of it because people are afraid to talk, said his fellow Minuteman, Oracle resident Ron Johnson. In Palominas, John Evans watches Minuteman volunteers drive past. He used to think they were vigilantes until he met them and found they were "pretty nice guys giving up a lot of their time for us." He hasn't had many problems with illegal entrants or property crime, but Evans said he supports what the Minuteman Project is doing. "What they're doing is going to spur some action," he said. "Something needs to be done." But other border residents like Darrell Van der Werf, view the self-described border guards as more of a nuisance than the illegal entrants. "They drive too fast, they go by making dust. Then they go out into the hot sun under an umbrella and sit there. What the hell is that?" the Bisbee Junction resident says. "These people ain't got nothing else to do." In 30 years, he's been broken into once. The burglar, presumably an illegal entrant, stole his gun but forgot to take the cylinder and stole a meatloaf that had gone bad. "I hope he got sick off it," he said. "But the Mexicans never bother anybody." For 63 years, Lorene Hardt has lived on Border Road south of Bisbee in a tree-covered home where she raised three children less than a quarter-mile north of the border. A decade ago, she was among the victims of a three-year string of 15 armed robberies by border bandits initially thought to have come from Mexico. They turned out to be teenagers from nearby Bisbee and Naco. Hardt said she's never run across an illegal entrant even though her home sits near one of the stretches of barbed-wire borderline the Minuteman volunteers patrol. Her encounters with migrants are limited to the water jugs and other trash the people leave behind. She's never seen a Minuteman either. She did hear there was a group up the road from her place the other day. Illegal entrants? Minutemen? "No, I heard there was a group of reporters," she said. Maryann Vell, 78, is a border activist from up near Willcox who travels down to volunteer in the project twice a week. Border problems are nothing new, she says, but now there are too many coming too fast. "They'll destroy us and destroy our world if it weren't for patriotic people like us." She's "very disappointed" more Arizonans haven't joined the Minuteman Project. Ben Leiendecker, 80, will tell you different. "I'm my own Minuteman!" he said. The Palominas rancher keeps a .45-caliber pistol under his bed and has planned out how he'll react to a gunfight when the drug smugglers come for him. He's faced problems with illegal entrants his whole life, he said. "They trash my pasture, they cut my fences. I'll spend half a day straightening the fence where they bend it to cross through," he said. "I'll tell you something: My family has lived here since 1912 and I'll fight to the death to stay here some more." His type of complaint is more common than the raping and pillaging the Minuteman volunteers discuss, county officials say. The Cochise County Sheriff's Department, which covers most the border area except for Douglas, responds mainly to property crime reports on the border, said department spokeswoman Carol Capas. But other things do happen. In January 2004, the Sheriff's Department started a volunteer patrol in Palominas after a woman and her daughter were beaten and stabbed by three illegal entrants. Last month, an AK-47-toting gunman led police on a high-speed chase from Interstate 10 and nearly made it back to Mexico before he ran into a wall of federal gunfire north of Douglas. But it's been about 10 years since border-related crime was a serious issue in Cochise County, she said. By contrast, there have been four cases of illegal entrants beaten and robbed by border bandits in the past year, she said. In Douglas, word of another protest, this one planned to shut down the port of entry and boycott Douglas businesses, has local officials and merchants fuming. The lead organizer for that protest, Armando Navarro, a University of California-Riverside professor and head of the National Alliance for Human Rights, said he's canceled the planned Saturday protest because he developed laryngitis. He said he'll return to Douglas eventually. Meanwhile he said he'll focus his protests in California, where the Minuteman Project will expand its border-watch effort. When news of the Minuteman Project hit town, Raul Montaño's Border Mart gas station and convenience store north of the port of entry at Douglas suffered. Then news of the boycott hit, and business dropped, he said. During a similar boycott last week, he suffered a 25 percent loss in business. "That only happens when the groups come down and try to close the border," he said. Anita Garcia, owner of Nubes Steak House in Douglas, wondered out loud why Californians think they need to protest in Arizona. "Shame on all those people. Why pick on Douglas all of a sudden? We don't need that kind of a bad name," she said. She's lived in Douglas 59 years and is aware of the crime and violence that hits this otherwise quiet town. But she says she's also aware of the same problems anywhere else. Across the port of entry, Carlos Puebla, 30, took a job selling chewing gum to people waiting to cross into the United States. "If they're protesting Arizona, then please make them stay in Arizona," he said. "This port is what people make a living from." As a result of the flurry of protests and counter-protests, Douglas is getting an image problem and Mexican shoppers are staying away, said City Manager Mike Ortega. In response, the Chamber of Commerce is launching its own media campaign in Sonora to encourage shoppers to please come back. The plan to boycott Douglas to protest the Minutemen surprised Minuteman Project supporter John Evans in Palominas. "What's that going to accomplish?" He thought about it for a moment, then grinned. "That's their right. Somebody protests and then somebody's going to protest him. That's just America, man."