By Garret Felder, Staff Writer

While American troops have spent over three years fighting in Iraq, the volunteers of the Minuteman Project believe they have been fighting their own war for the United States’ southern border.

As more Americans have joined the Minutemen’s cause in the last couple of months and traveled to Arizona, New Mexico and California to help, Jerry Parmley volunteered as a patriotic watchdog to help guard the country’s borders from attempted illegal immigration.

&8220;I felt [illegal immigration] was a problem that needed to be addressed and the government wasn’t addressing the problem,&8221; Parmley said. &8220;I am too old to go to Iraq for the country, so I thought this was something I could do in its place.&8221;

Parmley, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Emmons, was on the U.S. border between Columbus, N.M., and Palomas, Mexico from April 2 through 19 to assist the U.S. Border Patrol. During his short stint, Parmley used his cell phone to report when his group spotted any seeming illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. line.

&8220;Our mission was to report, direct and notify,&8221; Parmley said. &8220;We weren’t supposed to have any hands on really. We were supposed to report [border crossers] to the border patrol, direct the patrol to them and just keep an eye on them until the border patrol arrived to pick them up.&8221;

Columbus is coincidentally the same town Mexican General Pancho Villa raided in 1916. And in those three miles from Columbus to Palomas, Parmley witnessed the same struggle the border patrol has endured for the last few years.

&8220;It’s an eye-opener because when you get down there and get to Palomas you find the streets

are full of packs ready for the night and you find billboards with instructions basically [about how to survive illegally in the U.S.],&8221; Parmley said.

While he was there the project was run like a military operation, Parmley said. The project had a command center and each team would do reconnaissance work in hopes of finding locations where illegal immigrants were crossing the border. Following the surveying and a mission meeting, Parmley said, teams would go out at night and spend 12 to14 hours on lookout for border crossers.

Adding to the long hours on watch in the desert, the volunteers also had to provide their own supplies, Parmley said. First-generation night vision glasses and thermal sensing units were just some of the tools Parmley’s team had to help keep a good watch over their post.

Parmley also said he was surprised by the mixed bunch of volunteers that the project consisted of.

&8220;Most of them were very well-educated,&8221; Parmley said. &8220;We had teachers, nurses, professors, engineers and oil field workers. It was a vast array of people. So it really crosses all spectrums.&8221;

But the border patrol hasn’t been the only one dealing with illegal immigrants, Parmley said. The local residents have also coped with the effects of the migrants’ journeys into American territory. Parmley said the one property owner whose land his team occupied had the majority of his property destroyed he suspects by border crossers. Parmley said a lot of ranchers and property owners suffered similar damage.

Yet this one-sided, real-life version of Capture the Flag, which included more than 1000 Americans in April, isn’t just protecting the law, Parmley said. It is more like a demand for government to take action.

&8220;More than anything else this was a protest,&8221; Parmley said. &8220;There were people who were basically activists who saw a problem and the government was confronted but refused to do anything about it. So two years ago [these people] took it into their own hands, went down and started undocumented border patrols.&8221;

Still, the Minutemen’s urge for the government to take action has also led to some negative publicity. As the Minutemen caravaned for 10 days (May 3-12) across the southern half of the country to rally in 13 cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., they equally received opposition to their cause from a May 1 protest by both legal and illegal immigrants in Washington, D.C. The Minuteman Project has also been linked to the Ku Klux Klan and other forms of racist extremism by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Along with being called vigilantes by Mexican President Vincente Fox and racists by immigrants and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Parmley said, they also received threats on their own lives while guarding the border.

On April 20, the Minuteman Project pushed the government to take action by May 25 otherwise the group would start building a security wall on the southern border. President Bush has also pushed Congress to address the immigration problem with a bill by the end of the month.

&8220;The Minutemen have secured permission to cover 700 miles of border,&8221; Parmley said. &8220;People are donating bricks and giving money and they are going to start building a wall.&8221;

But as President Bush pressures Congress to pass an immigration bill before the Memorial Day weekend (a bill that would punish employers who hire undocumented workers with a $20,000 fine), the Minutemen will continue to watch over the country’s southern border with the simple task of a phone call.

&8220;Even though we were not a legal functioning unit, [the border patrol] loved us and so did the state patrol,&8221; Parmley said. &8220;The majority of people down there love us. If you go and eat breakfast in Columbus and there was a rancher or property owner in there, you never bought your breakfast or coffee. Even when what good you were doing may have seemed so trivial, you were noticed. But I really think that the minutemen were what brought this problem to the light.&8221;