From August 24, 2007

Post-Operation Wrap Report

Dear Minutemen & Supporters:

Well, its off and running. PBA held its first border operations events this weekend in Palominas, Arizona, the original birthplace of the Minuteman Movement. It was good to see so many Minutemen and new volunteers and to get back to the border in full support of one another.

We're proud to announce that we received 46 Minuteman volunteers throughout the weekend ops and loads of local support. Locals dropped off snacks and bottled water and offered kind words of support. The US Border Patrol agents we encountered were very excited to see the Minuteman back in this neck of the woods and offered words of encouragement as they too know that their mission is being advanced by our vigils of protest to our governments.

The PBA volunteers came from many States, Arizona, New Mexico, Missouri & NY to name a few. It was good to gather with volunteers from independent groups as well. We worked together, showing dedication and commitment to fighting the cause of illegal immigration. PBA, NM MM, ABP and MCDC worked side by side.  We are working to secure our borders through cooperation, not competition and it showed.

We would like to extend a special thank you to Glenn Spencer of American Patrol for his cooperation and support for this weekend’s operations. We look forward to working with him well into the future. Also, thanks to our volunteers like Spiker, Healy, Radar, Lanteri, Dotys, Heathorns, Art, PJ, Cox, Mel, Adams and a host of MM from New Mexico. We thank you from the bottom of our heart. PBA is grateful for your talents and service. A special round of applause also goes out to Pineapple 6 serving as Sector Chief. This was his operation. He put it together, he managed it, and he ran it. God bless you and your wife.

The media was with us for the majority of the weekend as the Sierra Vista Herald and NBC 12 out of Long Island NYC came to report, and stand post. Thanks to them for their commitment to seeing this cause advanced.

Although the camp activity was abuzz, sightings on post day and night were non-existent. This is the first operation that we can recall where there were NO SIGHTINGS! This is good news on so many levels. However, we all know nothing has stopped. According to the USBP, the main human smuggling routes have moved deep into the Huachuca Mountains, and points further west.

Some volunteers took trips to the border roads around Naco to review the new fencing the US government is now building. We saw what once used to be miles of cow fence being replaced with 15' high steel mesh, anti-climb fencing. Our nostalgic Border Rd. line east of Naco is now being secured with this type of fencing, and we hope to see many more miles of this activity in Cochise County to protect its citizens and the people of your community back home as well.

In all, it was great to get back home to Cochise County, stand post, perpetuate the movement together and look to the future. As our operation is now 'turn-key' we look to October, and that's where we need your help.

PBA will hold a 30 Day muster in October with our HQ in Palominas, AZ. Details of this event will be forthcoming in a few short weeks. However, we need your help. As the PBA grows and as groups seek to operate with us, we need volunteers to step up to the plate now and volunteer for Line Leadership Duty.  There are many of you that are reading this tonight who have stood many posts. You know who you are. Now we need you to raise your hand and offer your talents and experience to leading and guiding Minutemen on posts safely. If you have an interest in doing so, please contact Bill Irwin, PBA Operations manager at wirvin2@cox.net In order to grow and be more inclusive, we need you to lead our lines. We need fresh new faces to guide PBA into the future.

October’s operations will be exciting! PBA plans to go were the illegals are, and that means moving operations and lines into the mountains and the heavily traveled trails in the forest areas. This will be new terrain for most volunteers, and according to USBP, that is were we will be most effective. So, plan your vacations, your days off or your well deserved time away from the better-half, and make plans to participate with the PBA this October.

Semper Vigilans. The PBA Board of Directors thanks you for your encouragement and support.

Stacey O'Connell
PBA Vice Chairman

Border Alliance Wraps Up Its Inaugural Watch

By Shar Porier
Herald/Review

Published on Monday, August 20, 2007

PALOMINAS — Operation Gatekeeper, the first border operation of the Patriots’ Border Alliance, was wrapped up Sunday morning with the 46 members from across the nation participating in the event.

“Somebody had better do it,” said Joe Adams, a private investigator from St. Louis who worked reconnaissance for the group in regard to the weekend attempt at stopping illegal border crossers from coming into Arizona.

Patriots’ Border Alliance member Joe Adams of St. Louis stands outside of Palominas Trading Post on Sunday. Adams helped coordinate reconnaissance for the group during their three-day watch along the U.S.-Mexico border. (Suzanne Cronn•Herald/Review)

The former Marine did come across one illegal stumbling about the desert who was in desperate need of help. The man had been stung repeatedly by bees and had more than 50 stings on his body. “It’s a good thing he came across us, or he would have died out there,” Adams said. “He just collapsed. We poured ice cold water over his stings and called the Border Patrol. Though we’re not supposed to engage any illegals, we had to help the guy. We can offer humanitarian aid.”

Read the rest at The Herald .

Border Violence Pushes North

The Los Angeles Times has a feature today that comes as no surprise to patriots living in the borderlands:

Violent crime along the U.S.-Mexico border, which has long plagued the scrubby, often desolate stretch, is increasingly spilling northward into the cities of the American Southwest.

In Phoenix, deputies are working the unsolved case of 13 border crossers who were kidnapped and executed in the desert. In Dallas, nearly two dozen high school students have died in the last two years from overdoses of a $2-a-hit Mexican fad drug called "cheese heroin."

The crime surge, most acute in Texas and Arizona, is fueled by a gritty drug war in Mexico that includes hostages being held in stash houses, daylight gun battles claiming innocent lives, and teenage hit men for the Mexican cartels. Shipments of narcotics and vans carrying illegal workers on U.S. highways are being hijacked by rival cartels fighting over the lucrative smuggling routes. Fires are being set in national forests to divert police.

In Laredo, Texas, a teenager who had been driving around the United States in a $70,000 luxury sedan confessed to becoming a Mexican cartel hitman when he was just 13. In Nogales, Ariz., an 82-year-old man was caught with 79 kilograms of cocaine in his Chevrolet Impala. The youth was sentenced to 40 years in prison in one slaying case and is awaiting trial in another; the old man received 10 years.

In Southern California, Border Patrol agents routinely encounter smugglers driving immigrant-laden cars who try to escape by driving the wrong way on busy freeways. And stash houses packed with dozens of illegal immigrants have been discovered in Los Angeles.

Alliance Sets Series of Ground Rules Before It Starts Weekend Operation

By Gentry Braswell
Herald/Review

Published on Saturday, August 18, 2007

PALOMINAS —Minuteman-style civilian border watchers have become a common sight in Cochise County.

And they are a sight again, as the inaugural operation for the Patriots’ Border Alliance in the border area south of Palominas got under way on Friday.

Some 30 of the alliance’s weekend-long “Operation Gatekeeper” participants gathered about 2 p.m. behind the Palominas Trading Post on Highway 92 for a briefing that is mandatory before each border-watch shift begins.

Virtually all of the Operation Gatekeeper participants told alliance’s organizers that they had experience with this kind of civilian patrol by working with similar-minded groups like the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the American Border Patrol and the Texas Minutemen.

Bob Wright, chairman of the Patriots’ Border Alliance Board of Directors, called the briefing before the first shift Friday afternoon and ordered everyone to fetch their two-way radios and notebooks, making sure everyone had registered and signed proper waivers.

The Eunice, N.M., resident also passed out a copy of the alliance’s code of conduct.

Wright is an original member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and said the doom soothing from dissenters that the Minuteman Corps would fail did not come true. He attributed the MCDC’s success to participants’ adherence to standard operating procedures during border watches.

“That (Minuteman Corps) legacy is one of no trouble and no incidents, and when we leave here that legacy is going to be intact,” Wright said.

The point of these kind of border-watch operations, Wright said, “is to be the extra eyes and ears of law enforcement and to gather all the information we can to show the American people what’s really going on here.”

The Patriots’ Border Alliance’s protocol prohibits detaining, blocking, significant contact, conversation or being rude with illegal immigrants. It includes offering humanitarian aid to anyone who needs it. It also includes monitoring fellow participants in case they are in clear breach of the code of conduct, Wright said.

“I tell people your vetting never ends,” he said.

Border Group to Conduct Its First Operations Today in Palominas

By Gentry Braswell
Herald/Review

Published on Friday, August 17, 2007

SIERRA VISTA — The Patriots’ Border Alliance, a spin-off of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, will have its first border operation beginning today at noon at the Palominas Trading Post.

As of Thursday morning, 50 RSVPs had been received by Bill Irwin, who is a Patriots’ Border Alliance board member. He said he also is a founding and former member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. The Tucson man was the national operations officer for the MCDC before the Patriots’ Border Alliance formed after some members broke off from MCDC.

Irwin said the split occurred because of philosophical differences.

“A disagreement over a number of issues — I guess for lack of a better word, a lack of transparency at MCDC,” Irwin said. “This is our first operation since we became separated from MCDC.”

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps was formed in 2005 in opposition to illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Groups such as the Patriots’ Border Alliance, the American Border Patrol and the Texas Minutemen — like the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps — oppose illegal immigration through such means as civil protest and demonstration, political lobbying, and border operations whereby members monitor and report illegal immigrants.