Alphecca

Border Patrol

There's a nifty story about some of the good folks in the Minuteman group that are helping to protect our borders. From The Age:

...This 50-kilometre stretch of the Mexico-US border about 60 kilometres from Tucson, where George Bush gave a major speech last week on illegal immigration, is one of the key entry points for illegal immigrants.

And it is along this forbidding stretch of country that Connie Foust and Carmen Mercer, known locally as the Granny Brigade, have spent many of their nights these past eight months patrolling the border.

They are part of the Minutemen movement, which began last April with about 800 volunteers from all over America who set out to patrol the border and has grown into an organisation of close to 5000 people.

Mexican President Vincente Fox calls them ruthless and dangerous migrant hunters; George Bush has called them vigilantes. But Carmen Mercer and Connie Foust look more like the grandmothers they actually are than wild-eyed, beyond-the-law vigilantes.

Except that after the half-hour ride along this pot-holed dusty road, having passed a number of Border Patrol units and having watched, as a few hundred metres away, a Border Patrol unit chase what must have been a group of illegals across the US side of the border, both women get out of the four-wheel-drive pick-up truck and immediately strap on their gunbelts.

Carmen Mercer favours a .45 Colt pistol holstered on a wide brown belt studded with bullets, which perhaps is appropriate given that Carmen runs the OK Cafe in Tombstone about 30 kilometres away.

Connie Foust favours a more discreet Ladysmith .38, which she wears high up on her waist. Ms Foust lives in a small town near the border. She arrived from Montana five years ago for the climate, which she hoped would make her arthritis more bearable.

All Minutemen are armed — in Arizona, which has among the most lax gun laws in the country, you can wear pistols outside the major cities as long as they are clearly displayed.