Road to Reform
How do Minutemen figure into immigration debate?

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The Church on immigration

Jose Robles, director of the Office of Hispanic Ministry for the Phoenix Diocese, said the Church doesn’t have a position on the Minutemen’s activities.

“From the perspective of human dignity, if they’re saving lives, we’re grateful for that,” he says.

In 2003, the U.S. and Mexican bishops released a statement on immigration titled “Strangers No Longer,” a pastoral letter calling for global solidarity and an overhaul of the U.S. immigration system.

In that letter, the bishops called for a greater emphasis on family unification and a way for people who are already in the United States illegally to become legal U.S. residents.

The bishops of both countries also asked that the employment-based immigration system provide more legal ways to enter the country.

The Church, however, does support secure borders, Robles notes.

“The bishops of the Catholic Church support the securing of our borders and that there’d be an orderly flow of people going back and forth,” he says.

“If there was an ability to travel back and forth, we wouldn’t have these people dying,” Robles says.

In 2004, the U.S. bishops
launched their Justice for Immigrants campaign, which unites Catholic groups in support of a legalization program and comprehensive immigration reform.

Comprehensive immigration reform would include global anti-poverty efforts, expanded opportunities for family reunification and broad-based legalization for illegal immigrants.

The Minutemen generally reject any kind of amnesty, and their main priority is national sovereignty.

“The Church recognizes the right of sovereign nations to control their territories but rejects such control when it is exerted merely for the purpose of acquiring additional wealth,” the U.S. and Mexican bishops wrote in “Strangers No Longer.”

“More powerful economic nations, which have the ability to protect and feed their residents, have a stronger obligation to accommodate migration flows,” they wrote.

Ken Aldrich, who came from Maryland for the April Muster, had heard the Church’s position before.

“I understand where you guys are coming from,” he says. “You want to do the humanitarian thing. But that’s not helping.”

Night falls

Charlie Mozzer stands atop his bright orange jeep and peers through his binoculars, scanning the desert for illegal immigrants. A sticker on his truck has a derogatory comment about France.

“You hear that?” he asks, referring to what seemed to be barks and howls.

They were coyotes, all right — the kind that walk on two legs. He says they were likely signaling each other about the Minutemen.

The Minutemen set up lookouts on dirt roads. They only call the Border Patrol when they make visual contact with immigrants — they can’t report sounds, just head counts.

The Minutemen set up near migrant paths. The paths are easy to find because they are well-worn from use.

“When the government starts doing its job, I’m going home,” Mozzer says.

Night falls and a strong, crisp wind blows north. Mozzer and his partner on the patrol, Larry Law, don their coats. The temperature drops below 50 degrees.

For hours, the Minutemen don’t hear anything, sitting in the darkness, waiting.

Most of the immigrants the Minutemen come across are Latin Americans coming to work. But they also have special codes for when they come across another kind of traveler.

The codes are used to alert nearby lookout teams of danger. One code is for a group carrying guns. Another code is for travelers carrying large, square bags — probably drugs.

If a group of illegal immigrants is likely to be hostile, the Minutemen back down and avoid eye contact.

In the desert, away from the lights of the city, the stars seem brighter. But the Minutemen can’t see much beyond 25 feet.

Some use night-vision binoculars while others just sit and listen. They know what danger might lurk in the desert, so they listen intently.

At 10 p.m., there was still nothing, no sound. Some of the Minutemen begin to wonder if they’ll meet anyone this night.

Some crackling on walkie-talkies breaks the silence, followed by whispers. Someone has seen a group of illegal immigrants with his night-vision binoculars.

More silence. Will this group be hostile? 

“¡Hola amigos! ¡Hola!” Mozzer cries, shinning a light on a group of migrants with his high-powered spotlight. Law followed suit.

The two men begin counting the immigrants as they scatter.

“How many did you count?” Mozzer asks Law.

“About 18,” Law says.

A Border Patrol agent arrives shortly afterward and disappears into the brush, alone, with his flashlight.

Minutes later, three more Border Patrol vehicles roll up.

“They want to find them,” Mozzer says about the four officers searching for the immigrants.

From where Mozzer and Law stand, the Border Patrol agents seem to be walking in circles. All they can see are the beams from four flashlights and the desert plants the light falls on.

“Have you seen that dog they got?” Mozzer says to Law, referring to a dog the Border Patrol uses to search for immigrants.

“Yeah,” Law says.

“That dog is fantastic.”

They both nod, shivering a bit in the cold.

“I don’t envy those guys at all,” Mozzer says.

“It takes a lot of guts to go out in there,” Law says.

Law says immigrants are tired by the time they come across the Minutemen. They’re stationed some 35 miles north of the border.

“It used to be they’d just sit down when you’d flash the lights on them,” Law says, adding that the immigrants would often just wait quietly for the Border Patrol to arrive.

“They’re a docile people,” Law says.

But more recently, the Minutemen have found immigrants scattering and hiding in the desert — a technique developed by smugglers, Law says.

From the brush, a Border Patrol agent walks up with three immigrants behind him. The agent uses his flashlight to show the immigrants where to walk.

“You guys going to be here for awhile?” the agent asks Mozzer and Law after loading the immigrants onto a truck and locking the door.

“Yeah.”

“You mind keeping an eye on these guys?” the agent says. “They aren’t going anywhere.”

Mozzer and Law agree. That’s why they go on these patrols.

“We’re just another set of eyes for Border Patrol,” Mozzer says.

Another agent puts a fourth immigrant into the truck.

The four immigrants had entered the country illegally at Sasabe, eluding the National Guard and the Border Patrol before running into the Minutemen.

“There’s no longer an alternative,” Anibal Viviano says after being captured. “People are dying of hunger.”

Viviano says he’d been in the country previously for more than two years, working to provide for his wife, three kids and parents.

He says they’d each paid the coyotes $1,500 for passage to California. But there are no refunds if they get caught.

“On the border, there’s a lot of people who will bring you across,” Viviano says.

The four immigrants — all Catholic — began their journey in Guerrero in southern Mexico. They rode a bus for three days to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. They came to work in the fields.

“We’re not at fault,” one says. “The Mexican government is at fault because they don’t give work to the poor.”

Viviano is disenchanted with Mexico’s political process.

“The poor don’t believe in political parties anymore,” he says. “It’s all the same.”

Back at camp, Minuteman Bob Price echoes Viviano, saying that the governments of Latin American countries are largely to blame for the immigration crisis. But, he says, there are no simple answers.

“You see what it takes for people to get here. It’s a tough thing. They don’t want to just come to America to live,” Price says. “There’s more complicated reasons than that.”

Being in the Border Patrol’s custody didn’t break the four immigrants’ spirits or their sense of humor, though. One asks if there are any hamburgers available.

Crossing illegally isn’t a choice, Viviano says. There aren’t enough visas given to enter “the land of opportunity,” he adds.

Robles, with the diocesan Hispanic ministry office, echoes that. He said some  Latin Americans wait between 5-15 years for a visa.

“We aren’t a people that is looking for problems,” Viviano says. “We come to work.” 

Behind Viviano, one of the immigrants pleads to be let go.

“We’re just here to work,” he says. “Can’t you ask them to let us go?”

But the people who have the power to change the immigration system aren’t out in the chilly desert at 11 p.m. The people who were elected to represent the will of their people are sound asleep, tucked into their warm beds.

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