The Growing Vigilante Movement

By Peter Laufer, AlterNet. Posted May 9, 2005.

This is an excerpt from 'Wetback Nation : The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border' (Ivan R. Dee) by Peter Laufer. Laufer visited Cochise County in 2003 and spoke with Chris Simcox, one of the organizer's of April's Minutemen border patrols.

Tombstone, Arizona is a typical Western tourist mecca. In the late nineteenth century, the mining boomtown's saloons really were full of outlaw gunslingers. Today busloads of tourists come to Tombstone looking for the warm Southwest sun and to cheer the actors who recreate the famous gunfight between Wyatt Earp and the Clanton Gang at the O.K. Corral.

But underneath the veneer of simple, friendly locals catering to out-of-town visitors, Tombstone is a simmering cauldron of conflict. The Mexican border is just a few miles south. Tombstone lies directly in the path of undocumented migrants heading to Tucson, Phoenix, and points farther north.

Several months before my first trip to Tombstone, an out-of-work California schoolteacher drifted into town and took a job washing dishes in the O.K. Café. Before long, Chris Simcox hung up his dishtowel and went to work as assistant editor at the weekly newspaper, the Tombstone Tumbleweed.

Soon after Simcox went to work for the paper, he bought it. Local gossip says the capital came from his new girlfriend, the owner of the O.K. Café. "The paper was failing horribly," he tells me. "We were selling maybe four hundred copies a week. It wasn't making it. You know, no advertising."

His takeover of the Tombstone Tumbleweed is a story Chris Simcox tells often. His office phone rings incessantly. Reporters worldwide want to hear him complain about illegal immigration into Cochise County, and about how he founded the vigilante group he calls the Civil Homeland Defense Corps. Since he bought the paper, Simcox has turned the weekly into a propaganda sheet for his group's border activities. It's a change he's proud to report. "It's been nonstop. I mean I've done hundreds and hundreds of interviews. It's working."

What's working? I ask him. What are you accomplishing?

"Getting everyone across this country to understand what's going on down here in this border. That it's ridiculous. We've been at war since 9/11 basically. We were attacked by people who came in, and then you watch what goes on in this border and you think, my God, it's a free for all. There is no real national security when you have an open border like this one here. Our government will not protect our borders. That's my number one concern."

This concern fills the 16-page paper each week. The January 30, 2003 issue is typical. The editorial complains that a couple of tourists from Oregon were unable to get the county sheriff or the Border Patrol to respond when they called after they "spotted a group of eight suspected illegals walking just off the road. . ."

Frustrated, reports Simcox, the couple came to the newspaper's office because they had heard about the Civil Homeland Defense Corps. "There are so many illegals everwhere we go," he quotes them as telling him. "We can't even take a hike anymore without running into a group. We think this will be the last time we winter here in the south near the border. Our government had better do something!"

Simcox ends his editorial with his call to action. "Sounds like it is up to us, friends, the citizens. If you don't like it or it scares you? You can hide, or run, or you can join us as the eyes and ears of the citizens who can make a difference. Civil Homeland Defense is the only immediate solution." In a following editorial he charges that five thousand "illegals" came through Cochise County while Border Patrol officers watched the Super Bowl. "Hasta la vista," he writes, "welcome to the United States. Hope you enjoyed the game."

Forty-two years old when we talk in 2003, Chris Simcox looks much younger. His office is cluttered, dominated by his computer terminal and his electronic drum set. He wears the Tombstone uniform: work shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots.

Simcox warms to his new passion as he tells me about his "work" on the border, he's wide-eyed and excited. "I mean, granted it's, you know, the little boy with his thumb in the dike basically. But we go down to the border when we can and with however many numbers we can put together and we help patrol that border. Using the same tactics and the same procedures and the same humane interaction that the Border Patrol uses. We work shoulder to shoulder with Border Patrol. We're on Border Road, which you'll see when you go out with us. We're in our vehicles. We drive back and forth. We create a presence that says, 'There's activity here, don't come across.' " He expresses some compassion for the Mexicans he's looking for during his patrols. "They're human beings. I mean, there's a reason why they're coming across, and that's because Mexico's not taking care of their needs, their own government. I've seen people out there in bad shape. But I've also been shot at by, you know, drug dealers. There's been so many drug busts, it's incredible. Something's not right."

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