posted June 05, 2007 05:11 PM              

Minutemen in California look over the border wall for immigrants trying to cross into the US.

The Minutemen, the anti-immigrant vigilante force set up two years ago to patrol the US-Mexican border, is in danger of imploding in a row over finances.
The group was formed in 2005 in response to concern over illegal immigration, mainly Hispanic. It has been accused of attracting racists, a charge it denies. The group, which split within months of its formation in a row over funds, has now fragmented again. A breakaway group, the Patriots' Border Alliance, is being set up and has established a website.

One of the leaders of the new group, Bob Wright, acknowledged the risk of the whole movement falling apart. "I think this absolutely unjustified farce has a good chance of tearing this organisation apart, which would be a damn shame," he said.
The demise of the Minutemen would be welcomed by liberal organisations such as the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Centre. Heidi Beirich, its deputy director of intelligence, said the latest split was "a big deal". She said: "The movement had grassroots support when it first appeared. They had chapters in a dozen states - and that era is coming to an end."

In 2005 the Minutemen attracted volunteers from all round the country to protest at the numbers of immigrants crossing the border clandestinely. Amid much publicity, they set up their own border patrol posts. But federal border guards said the Minutemen were largely ineffective.

Before the split, Mr Wright was deputy leader of the biggest of the Minuteman groups, the Minuteman Civil Defence Corps, which claims a membership of up to 8,000. The split came after he and other senior members invited the leader, Chris Simcox, to a meeting in Arizona to account for funds. Mr Simcox accused them of arranging an unauthorised meeting and purged Mr Wright and other senior leaders, and about a dozen state organisers.

Mr Wright said: "We asked for a meeting and this insanity is the result of that ... We were worried that the standard operating practice was not being followed as religiously as should have been." Hundreds of members were now leaving, he said.

In a separate development, a contributor to the Minutemen is suing for the return of a $100,000 (£50,000) donation, after their failure to build a promised Israeli-style barrier on the Arizona-Mexico border.

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Monday June 4, 2007
The Guardian

posted June 05, 2007 10:32 PM            

Published on Wednesday, May 30, 2007

BISBEE — A man who mortgaged his home in order to help the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps build border fencing on private land in Cochise County is suing the group and its president, Chris Simcox, for fraud and breach of contract.

In a complaint filed May 22 in Maricopa County Superior Court, Jim Campbell, a retired homebuilder and Air Force veteran from Fountain Hills, accused Simcox and the MCDC of falsely promising to build a multi-layered Israeli-style security barrier on the Palominas ranch of John and Jack Ladd.

Campbell alleges that, after hearing the MCDC publicize the plan in April 2006, he had three telephone conversations with Peter Kunz, project manager for the effort, in which Kunz promised the Israeli-style barrier would be built along 10 miles of the Ladd ranch.

Encouraged by the plan, Campbell says he took out a loan on his home and donated $100,000 to the project on May 22, 2006, with the stipulation that it be used to purchase steel tubing for the Ladds’ fence. However, by the May 27, 2006, groundbreaking, the Ladds had rejected the double-layered, 14-foot barrier in favor of a traditional range fence. “To date, MCDC has not constructed any ‘Israeli-style’ border fencing on the property where the groundbreaking ceremony took place, in breach of agreement between it and Campbell,” the complaint states.

Campbell says he asked for his donation back, but Simcox told him the money would be used to build an Israeli-style barrier along 9/10 mile of Richard Hodges’ border-front ranch in Bisbee Junction.

Instead, Campbell alleges, the money was diverted to other MCDC projects and affiliated groups, while work on Hodges’ fence languished.

Campbell is asking for a total of $1,220,845 in damages and reimbursements from Simcox, the MCDC and Kunz. His suit also names Diener Consultants, a Chicago-based fund-raising organization that has played a central role in the fence-building campaign, and the MCDC-affiliated Declaration Alliance, a Virginia-based charity founded by conservative activist Alan Keyes.

Simcox was puzzled by the complaint, saying Campbell had not only donated the $100,000, but had purchased and delivered $60,000 worth of steel tubing himself. Those tubes were used to build the first segment of fencing at Hodges’ property, Simcox said, and the remaining $40,000 was used to purchase steel panels for the barrier.

“That steel is in the ground,” Simcox said. “His $100,000 is sitting out there on the Hodges ranch. We’ve showed good faith.”

Simcox acknowledged that work on Hodges’ fence had stalled, but he promised that it would begin again as soon as the necessary funds are raised.

“I’m sorry it has not gone as quickly as we had thought, but you can only erect as much fence as you have the donations for,” he said.

Last week, Simcox fired at least four MCDC volunteer officials who held a meeting May 19 in Phoenix to air grievances about the group’s executive leadership.

He said the expelled officials — New Mexico Chapter Director Bob Wright, Oklahoma Chapter Director Greg Thompson, National Operations Officer Bill Irwin and former Arizona chapter head Stacey O’Connell — had violated MCDC policy by calling an unauthorized meeting. And he accused them of attempting to seize control of the Minutemen in response to a plan to restructure the group’s leadership.

Wright denied that he and the others were attempting a power grab. He said they simply wanted to address several perceived problems, including a lack of financial accountability and Simcox’s heavy-handed leadership style.

“This was a tragic, tragic misjudgment on (Simcox’s) part because these were just state leaders who were seeing some things going on inside MCDC they thought could be fixed,” Wright said.

“None of these guys make a dime, none of them stand to profit. They spend thousands of dollars of their own money to come down and help secure that border, and I believe that that expenditure of time and money makes them shareholders in the Minutemen and gives them a voice in how things are going.”

Minuteman border fence timeline

• April 2006: MCDC President Chris Simcox announces that his organization will begin constructing border fences on private land unless the White House deploys military personnel to the border by May 25.

• May 2006: A post to the Minuteman HQ Web site shows a fence design based on an Israeli model: two parallel 12- to 15-foot fences mounted with surveillance cameras flanked by trenches and razor wire.

According to the Web site, more than 1,000 people have signed up to help build the barrier and supporters have donated more than $225,000 to the effort.

• May 15, 2006: MCDC Executive Director Al Garza says the Minutemen are going ahead with their fence-building plan, and that a ranch in Cochise County has been chosen as the site for the first fence.

• May 22, 2006: Jack Ladd, owner of the ranch where the fence is to be built, tells the Herald/Review he is not interested in the Israeli-style barrier. Instead, he wants the Minutemen to build a reinforced five-strand range fence that will protect his cattle and stop drive-throughs on his property.

• May 27, 2006: The Minutemen hold a groundbreaking ceremony at the Ladd ranch featuring speeches from former ambassador to the United Nations Alan Keyes, MCDC president Chris Simcox and Jim Campbell, a Fountain Hills man who mortgaged his home to donate $100,000 to the effort. Simcox says his group is eyeing a property 4 1/2 miles east of Naco for its next fence-building project — a property later identified as Richard Hodges’ ranch in Bisbee Junction.

• July 18, 2006: Cochise County Planning Director Judy Anderson rules the county cannot block construction of a double-layered, 14-foot high-tech security fence at Hodges’ ranch because the barrier will serve an agricultural purpose.

• August 2006: The Minutemen break ground on 9/10 mile of fencing at Hodges’ ranch. The group also announces that a private Washington-based company called FOMGuard USA has agreed to donate $7.8 worth of fiber-optic sensor meshing to the project.

• Jan. 28, 2007: MCDC volunteers finish constructing 9 1/2 miles of range fencing on the Ladd ranch.

• January 2007: Work on the partially completed MCDC fence at the Hodges ranch is suspended, reportedly due to a lack of funds and volunteers.

• February 2007: Simcox sends a letter to MCDC volunteers asking for donations to raise the more than $300,000 necessary to finish Hodges’ fence.

• May 2007: The MCDC announces to its volunteers that work on Hodges’ fence is about to begin again and that it needs $400,000 in donations to finish the project.

• May 22, 2007: Jim Campbell files a $1.2 million lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court accusing the MCDC, Simcox and several related parties of fraudulent misrepresentation and breach of contract.

http://www.svherald.com/articles/2007/05/30/news/doc465d0fc256c9f078099071.txt

I figured it might be nice to have a newsource from the border rather than getting the scoop from an English newspaper.

Another article about the dissent:

Minuteman group expels dissenting officers
By Jonathan Clark
Herald/Review

Published on Thursday, May 24, 2007

BISBEE — At least two state-level officers of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps have been expelled from the civilian border-watch group after raising questions about its executive leadership, particularly that of MCDC President Chris Simcox.

In a May 8 memo that surfaced on the Internet this week, 18 members of the MCDC’s state chapter leadership committee asked Simcox, Vice President Carmen Mercer and Executive Director Al Garza to attend a May 19 meeting in Phoenix to address a number of perceived problems, including a lack of financial accountability and Simcox’s domineering leadership style.

Simcox responded with a May 14 memo denouncing the meeting, as well as the state chapter leadership committee itself, as unauthorized and subversive.

He wrote that four MCDC officers who had signed the original memo — New Mexico Chapter Director Bob Wright, Oklahoma Chapter Director Greg Thompson, National Operations Officer Bill Irwin and former Arizona chapter head Stacey O’Connell — had had their membership in the Minutemen terminated, and he warned that any other members who attended the May 19 meeting would be expelled as well.

An estimated 12 or 13 state leaders proceeded with the meeting last Saturday and issued a vote of no confidence against Simcox, one of the attendees told the Herald/Review under conditions of anonymity.

Simcox said he objected to the meeting, which he called “a despicable attempt to undermine the authority of the organization,” not because of the issues it meant to address, but because of how it was organized.

It was scheduled for the first day of his vacation in order to purposely inconvenience him, he said. And the letter informing him of the meeting sounded to Simcox more like an ultimatum than an invitation.

“The way they about it was pretty underhanded,” said Simcox, who believes that some of the organizers wanted to get back at him because he had planned to replace them.

“(It was) an attempt at a coup again — not the first time that that’s happened — but it really couldn’t have come at a worse time,” he said, pointing to the MCDC’s ongoing efforts to lobby against the Senate’s current immigration proposal.

As for the dismissals, only Wright and Thompson have formally been terminated, Simcox said; Irwin and O’Connell are still under review. O’Connell did not wish to comment for this story, nor did Wright, who said that the dispute was an internal matter that would be resolved internally.

However, in a May 21 letter to MCDC members that was posted to several Internet discussion groups, Wright characterized Simcox’s reaction to the May 19 meeting as a “paranoia-driven nightmare,” and he suggested that the expulsions included more than him and Thompson.

“By now you have probably heard rumors or received an e-mail about a massive purge of your national and state leaders,” Wright wrote.

“These rumors are true,” he said.

“The numbers are staggering and to anyone who is capable of reason, the devastating effect on your MCDC is inescapable.”

Wright wrote that he and his fellow state-level leaders called the meeting out of concerns for the health and credibility of the MCDC.

They scheduled the event for May 19 in Phoenix because they had been told that Simcox would be at his Scottsdale home that day — it was the first day of a Phoenix-area Minuteman muster.

The deposed leaders are now demanding to be reinstated and have given Simcox until Friday to schedule a meeting to resolve the crisis.

If not, they say they will begin airing the MCDC’s dirty laundry to the media.

The infighting has delighted some of Simcox’s critics outside of the MCDC, including the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which responded to the expulsions Wednesday with an article posted to its Web site titled: “House of cards: Chris Simcox’s Minuteman group, the country’s largest civilian border patrol, may be collapsing.”

The story is accessed via a link reading “extremist Minuteman group implodes.”

From the outside, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps always looked like a fundraising racket,” Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, told the Herald/Review. “Apparently, it looks that way from the inside, too.”

Simcox, however, insisted that rumors of the Minutemen’s demise are exaggerated. “We are stronger than ever,” he said.

Simcox founded the precursor to the MCDC, a border-watch outfit known as Civil Homeland Defense, in 2002 while living in Tombstone and publishing the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper.

In late 2004 he joined forces with Jim Gilchrist’s California-based Minuteman Project, and Civil Homeland Defense became the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

Simcox and Gilchrist feuded and split in December 2005, with Simcox’s faction maintaining the MCDC name.