Immigration Reform and Border Crisis: Anti-Immigration Organization Aims to Fight Illegals With Watch Group
A dormant anti-immigration group has come back into the spotlight after four years in order to call up civilian volunteers to help patrol the border.
The Minuteman Project President Jim Gilchrist said he wants to recruit 3,500 volunteers to patrol the 2,000-mile Mexican border in what he has dubbed "Operation Normandy," according to Fox.
"If you are familiar with the Normandy invasion of France in 1944, then you have an idea how large and logistically complicated this event will be," Gilchrist told Raw Story. "However, there is one difference. We are not going to the border to invade anyone. We are going there to stop an invasion."
The group was previously active from 2005-2010, amid much controversy, and acted as eyes and ears for the U.S. Border Patrol.
The Los Angeles Times reports that members of the group have been charged criminally, and former President George W. Bush denounced them as vigilantes in 2005.
The Minuteman was a name given to American Revolution soldiers, representing the similar ideas of civilians being called to action.
The website for the group includes posts from news organizations about illegal immigration, propaganda to fight for the cause, as well as a compilation of information such as the number of tunnels found between the U.S. and Mexico.
But Gilchrist warns that the purpose of the group is not violent, and that all volunteers should operate within the boundaries of the law, according to the Washington Times.
He hopes to recruit the necessary number of volunteers in 10 months, to begin Operation Normandy in 2015, and begin a sort of "Neighborhood Watch" on the Mexican border spanning from San Deigo to Texas, according to Fox.
The group's reappearance comes at a time when many grassroots efforts and everyday citizens are protesting the government's inefficiencies in dealing with the immigration crisis.
"The people blocking buses in Murrieta, California, didn't come from radical groups, they were everyday Americans who were perfectly willing to frighten those children," Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told U.S. News. "What we are seeing is there is a lot of anger out there about the failure of the government to resolve the immigration crisis."
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