HOPE FOR BORDER SECURITY SEEN IN U.S. HOUSE
PHOENIX, AZ—Chris Simcox, President and Founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) applauds the efforts of Congressman Lamar Smith (R-RX), Peter King (R-NY) and Brian Bilbray (R-CA) for taking the initiative through House Resolution 499 to enforce provisions of the 2006 Secure Fence Act. When the Senate attempted to ramrod its ill-considered amnesty legislation last month, Minutemen flooded Capitol Hill with office visits, phone calls and over three million faxes to shut it down and now encourages citizens to demonstrate their support for the Congressmen advancing Border Security First, and to question any Representatives who are not publicly advocating for passage of Resolution 499.
“Border security should begin with the deployment of 20,000 National Guard soldiers and the building a physical fence on our nation’s porous borders—not by offering platitudes about unproven ‘virtual’ fencing,” states Chris Simcox. “Once our borders are secured, we can begin discussions on details about the massive illegal population and interior enforcement, but securing the borders against an ongoing alien invasion and terrorist infiltration must remain the top priority for the sake of future generations of Americans.”
Just this past weekend, MCDC volunteers in Arizona conducted their monthly border monitoring operation entitled “The Heat Goes On,” where they assisted U.S. Border Patrol agents in locating 51 suspected illegal aliens. Of these, only 19 intruders were successfully apprehended by Border Patrol agents during intense rain storms and flash flooding in the Tucson sector of Arizona. Since October 2002, MCDC border operations have led to the apprehension of over 13,522 illegal entrants by authorities and over 300 people who were rescued in the desert from dehydration, starvation or bodily injury associated with the torturous illegal journey into the United States.
Currently, the Minuteman message of “border security first” has provided a growing impetus for the creation of 92 MCDC nationally-sponsored chapters, organized at the state and local levels.
MCDC has been stalwart in advocating that border security be implemented immediately with funds already allocated to the Department of Homeland Security’s treasury through the 2006 Secure Fence Act. MCDC has rejected numerous Bush administration and Congressional calls for massive spending from hypothetical billions of new dollars for unproven “virtual” border security in exchange for amnesty programs.
Unlike the U.S. government, the Minutemen have already been implementing a plan for border security that is more than “virtual” and that includes an effective material barrier—by volunteering their time, energy and personal funds in order to build highly effective demonstration security fencing on private ranch land, expensed through private donations obtained from thousands of citizens nationally. To educate the public and force federal government attention to the realities of border security, Minuteman volunteers have taken steps to build this fence along the border utilizing state of the art technology with the fiber optic mesh produced by FOMGuard, USA, also currently in use on U.S. military installations, the DMZ in Korea and the West Bank in Israel, and recently featured in National Geographic magazine.
