Vigilantes in Arizona hunt immigrants

On March 31, at the U.S./Mexico border in Arizona, an anti-immigrant group calling itself the Minuteman Project gathered. It made big news.

The project is described as a “volunteer patrol group in search of furtive immigrants” who cross the desert into the United States in Arizona. One volunteer called it the “biggest neighborhood watch ever.”

According to news reports, the Minuteman Project will “post 1,000 volunteers across 23 miles of border.” They are reported to plan to stay there for at least the month of April.

The gathering took place on the same day as Cesar Chavez’s birthday, in the same state where he was born. Was the timing just a coincidence? Chavez was a Chicano labor leader who devoted his life to fighting for the rights of immigrants and farm workers.

Vigilantes interviewed on CNN on March 31 looked as if their average age was 75. It was hard to imagine them chasing anyone down. But they are armed and dangerous.

An 82-year-old retired Marine sergeant told reporters he was looking for adventure. He had a .38-caliber pistol strapped to his leg.

Another Minuteman, a former kindergarten teacher from Los Angeles, said the project was in response to the failure of the government to stop the flow of immigrants.

The Minutemen have attracted the support of groups such as the Aryan Nation and other white supremacist organizations.

In the first few days that the Minutemen were on the border, they claimed to have participated in the capture of 146 undocumented workers.

On the border

Arizona for the last few years has been the scene of a growing and racist anti-immigrant attack. The federal government in Washington has also focused attention on Arizona.

In 2004, the Department of Homeland Security obtained an initial $10 million for its Arizona Border Control Initiative. It is adding 200 new border patrol agents, 350 helicopters and an unknown number of aircraft to patrol the remotest parts of the border, further militarizing the U.S./Mexico border.

This will result in increased repression for immigrants.

Already, as a result of the Minutemen, the U.S. Border Patrol has sent 500 more agents to Arizona. The patrol alleges that 51 percent of all undocumented immigrants cross into the U.S. in that state.

The Public Policy Institute of California reports that these new measures will force workers crossing the border to go to more remote areas that are even more dangerous. The number of people who drowned crossing the border rose from 48 in 1994 to 92 in 2000.

At least 151 immigrants are reported to have died in the Arizona desert last year alone. The actual numbers could be much higher.

The movement in Arizona in solidarity with immigrants has responded to this new offensive. The Border Action Network is calling on supporters to “end vigilante hate crimes and impunity on the border” by calling authorities to protest the Minutemen. To find out more about this campaign, visit borderaction.org.

BAN says about the Minutemen: “An ugly movement of armed, militia-style civilian groups has begun patrolling the Arizona border for immigrants. Men, women and children are held at gunpoint, chased by dogs, and in some cases beaten or shot.”

Supporters of immigrant rights can also join advocates and immigrants in D.C. on April 27, when a National Day of Action will take place in Washington. For more information, see floc.com.

Behind the right wing

The Minuteman Project is a very dangerous example of the extra-legal measures the capitalist state historically utilizes to get the job done for the bosses and corporations.

The Minutemen criticized President George W. Bush last week when even he labeled them a vigilante group. Despite the public rift, Bush and the Minutemen are on the same side of the class camp.

Both advocate tactics that ultimately will continue the super exploitation of immigrant workers. Two years ago, despite mass pressure for amnesty and legalization of undocumented workers, for example, Bush was opposed to legalization.

An anti-immigrant climate has been whipped up in the media. Criminalizing workers whose sole goal is to work and sur vive has become common on the “news” channels. So has propaganda blaming immigrants for the layoffs and low pay decided on in corporate boardrooms.

However, when many unions in Oct o ber 2003 supported a national march for immigrant rights, ending in a rally of 100,000 workers of all nationalities in Queens, N.Y., the capitalist media played it down.

The anti-immigrant vigilantism is calculated to drive immigrants further and further underground. Capitalism would not last a day without the labor of immigrants. The hysteria is calculated to help the capitalists make more profits and have a freer hand to exploit and manipulate workers.

The right wing calculates this backlash to put a chill on the growing organizing efforts carried out by immigrants and their advocates.

In the post-9/11 climate, from the Bush administration to the Minuteman Project to the Federation for American Immi gration Reform, efforts are made to link immigrants to the so-called war on terror.

Calls for “closing the border” to “secure our country,” and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s statement that al-Qaeda networks may be operating in Mexico, all aim to criminalize and terrorize immigrants.

As long as strawberries need picking, meat needs butchering and groceries need delivering, bosses will continue to demand immigrant labor. At the same time, they want to control them by denying them legal status.

But in the fine tradition of Cesar Chavez, immigrants will continue to organize to fight for their rights.

The tensions between these two class forces will inevitably erupt into more glorious labor struggles like those of the 1930s and 1960s.