azredhawk44
Moderator
Minuteman Civil Defense Corps
April Border Operation, April 1-30, 2007
My Experiences, April 9-11.
I arrived at the Minuteman base camp in the Altar Valley south of Three Points, Arizona at about 1:00 in the afternoon on Monday, April 9th. The camp is approximately 35 miles north of the Arizona/Mexico border.
A line was out at that point, approximately 15 people or so, south about 5 miles. We have several observation lines from which we will randomly observe the southern desert, all located near major illegal alien travel pathways.
I checked in to camp, signed on for the 4 to midnight shift, and set up my little home away from home. I unloaded my camp table, cooler, lantern, camp stove and other camp gear in the tent area and head over to get acquainted with folks.
People were there from everywhere. New York, Maine, Ohio, Indiana, Utah, California, Nevada... all freaking over. Professions ranged from PhD candidates doing research while on the line to IT guys to retired VFW members to cops to construction to defense lawyers. Even some ex-CIA folks, retired.
Rule changes since last year for line watches now accomodate long guns on line patrols. When we went out on the line I was sitting with a fellow from Indiana. First thing he did (and from what I understand, most other folks did on other posts) is position his AR-15 rifle in his car for easy access, chamber a round and safe it. My M1A sat comfortably behind my truck seat. I did not chamber and safe a round in it, and the magazine was out of the rifle. I did not feel a need for that particular precaution, although I certainly do not begrudge anyone whatever they feel they need to be safe.
We saw nothing on the Monday night line. This is understandable due to the Easter holiday. Traffic numbers had tapered off on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Given that our observation point is about 30 miles north of the border it can take 1-3 days for illegals to reach our lines. Since very few would choose to leave over the Easter holiday, Monday's scarcity was not a surprise.
We came back to camp at midnight and I slept until about 7:30 Tuesday morning. I woke up, ate some grub and headed over to the HQ to chat with folks over a cup of coffee. I signed on for the 4 to midnight shift again (I missed the day shift of 8 to 4pm).
At about 9AM, two illegals wandered into our camp. They obviously couldn't read or speak a word of English (or they would have ran for the hills) since we had Minutemen banners all over the place and we're laughing and talking about illegals we have seen in previous watches. They were carrying water bottles that were practically empty and each had a backpack that you could tell had nearly nothing in it by the way they bunched.
I was the only Spanish speaker there, so I started to talk with them. I offered them help if they were injured (they weren't), then some food, water and coffee. Our Comms leader called the Border Patrol while we sat and talked with these guys for a while, and about half and hour or 45 minutes later we had our first 2 illegal apprehensions for the day.
They just climbed right on up into the BP truck, no fuss about it. It amazes me every time an arrest is made that they don't try to run. Every arrest I've seen thus far though, they are 30-40 miles into a 50-60 mile hike and are dead-dog tired and hungry.
The Search and Rescue guys went out around Noon to check on some illegal lay-up areas a few miles behind the ranch we stayed at... Every now and then the coyotes and other illegals will leave behind a trailmate who was injured, sick or dead. I wanted to go, but didn't have the time to do so before my 4 o'clock line shift.
My second shift was considerably more active than the first one. It seems the lag in the illegal flow was beginning to expire. We formed a line on one of the ranch roads about 5 miles away from the central highway, and spaced ourselves about 200-300 yards apart, in pairs. This way we can cover about 2-3 miles horizontally with one line shift in the valley. It may be a wide valley (50+ miles), but the number of easily passable trails is well monitored and documented. We centered on a major migrant line and waited for dusk.
One thing that struck me was the disparity in radio ettiquette between some folks in the Minutemen movement versus other folks. We have an SOP for communications and everyone gets trained on comm SOP prior to everyshift since most folks are only down for a couple days at a time and new faces are constantly on the line.
Never fails though, that some sissy eastern tenderfoot who doesn't know jack about open country, communications, observation, security or hunting, is always blathering on with their radio. There was this guy from Ohio that was driving me absolutely crazy with his inability to maintain radio silence.
I had a pair of pretty nice FRS/GMRS radios, for which I had one earbud. I programmed it to scan our "local" line channel as well as the more powerful repeater channel, so I could hear activity from any necessary source. I kept the earbud in my ear at the lowest volume setting from which I could still get information... If I used the system speaker then the sound could literally carry nearly half a mile.
Ohio tenderfoot just wouldn't shut up though. He also had the "roger" and "tone" functions running on his radios, so the end of transmissions he made would automatically beep on all the handsets in the field, and everytime his picked up a sound would beep too. I was hearing beeps up and down the line most of the night until the line leader went and remedied the problem. Of course this meant that the line leader had to fire up his car (with headlights and loud engine) and drive a mile, leaving a dust cloud as a signal.
It's amazing how one stupid person can spoil a watch. Illegals may be poor and unintelligent, but they ain't dumb. They can hear.
I also suspect that the coyotes have a new technique based on our poor radio ettiquette. They carry FRS radios similar to ours. They scan for our chatter constantly, and know our unencrypted central repeater channel. But... I think they are pushing that annoying button that sounds like a telephone ring, every couple of miles as they walk, and then listen for our receiving handsets to make that noise. I heard that ring half a dozen times during the night, and even a stupid naiive easterner wouldn't do that. The signal was always faint... I would guess 3-4 miles away by the signal quality, and I am glad I had my earbud so as not to fall into that particular ploy. But, only about 1/3 the line had control over their audio output from their radios. I could hear posts to the west of me, almost 1/2 a mile away. Very frustrating.
The Tuesday watch ended up yielding 10 illegal apprehensions and 20 more reported sightings. A group of 7-10 IA's crossed our line a little bit after sunset, around 8PM or so. We lit them up with 10million candle power lights and they scattered. BP came by and picked up 3 of them, then relayed their trajectory to units further north. Closer to about 11PM a larger group of about 20 tried us a little further to the west... probably part of the same party that tried earlier (remember the phone tones I was talking about?). We held the line by shifting a couple of folks to the west and by monitoring them with thermal cameras. BP came by and were able to detain another 7 before they retreated further south and out of our vision and BP's reach at that road. We don't know if BP detained the remaining 7 IA's from earlier or the remaining 13 from the 11PM sighting. We ended up counting 10 apprehensions and 30 sightings for that watch.
We broke the line down at midnight and headed back to camp. You can't catch them all.
I woke up on Wednesday about 8AM, made breakfast and broke down my camp. I had to go back home today and didn't have time for an 8 hour line shift, but a couple of the SAR guys invited me out with them to one of the lay-up areas.
We drove out to the closest foot-trail to the layup and walked about 2 miles in. The amount of scattered clothing and equipment is just staggering. The environmental impact of these illegals is abysmal... it would take decades from TODAY if the flow stopped immediately to repair.
New clothing was discarded randomly along the trail. Some of it was VERY SMALL clothing. The pants couldn't have been more than 18" long on the outside seam. I'd guess those pants belonged to a 4 year old. Dozens and dozens of bottles of the mexican version of Pedialyte. All appearances demonstrate that several children had been taken down this trail, recently. The bottles were missing their caps, yet had not had any dust blown inside them. Less than a day probably.
The shoes these people wear for such an excursion is disheartening. Converse All Stars, rubberized slippers, fake designer boots, cheap sneakers. It's all out there. Discarded underwear, women's and men's, some of it cut or torn. Rape or sexual assault? Probably.
The number of backpacks out there is staggering. At one layup area, there must have been THOUSANDS of discarded backpacks. They were all small packs, less than 2000 cubic inches... most closer in size to a hydration bladder carrier (sans the bladder). There were enough packs to completely cover about 1/2 of a football field. End to end, touching each other, completely covering the desert so that little-to-no sand was visible between them. Hundreds of heavy duty garbage bags that the IA's use for sleeping bags or rain cover.
April Border Operation, April 1-30, 2007
My Experiences, April 9-11.
I arrived at the Minuteman base camp in the Altar Valley south of Three Points, Arizona at about 1:00 in the afternoon on Monday, April 9th. The camp is approximately 35 miles north of the Arizona/Mexico border.
A line was out at that point, approximately 15 people or so, south about 5 miles. We have several observation lines from which we will randomly observe the southern desert, all located near major illegal alien travel pathways.
I checked in to camp, signed on for the 4 to midnight shift, and set up my little home away from home. I unloaded my camp table, cooler, lantern, camp stove and other camp gear in the tent area and head over to get acquainted with folks.
People were there from everywhere. New York, Maine, Ohio, Indiana, Utah, California, Nevada... all freaking over. Professions ranged from PhD candidates doing research while on the line to IT guys to retired VFW members to cops to construction to defense lawyers. Even some ex-CIA folks, retired.
Rule changes since last year for line watches now accomodate long guns on line patrols. When we went out on the line I was sitting with a fellow from Indiana. First thing he did (and from what I understand, most other folks did on other posts) is position his AR-15 rifle in his car for easy access, chamber a round and safe it. My M1A sat comfortably behind my truck seat. I did not chamber and safe a round in it, and the magazine was out of the rifle. I did not feel a need for that particular precaution, although I certainly do not begrudge anyone whatever they feel they need to be safe.
We saw nothing on the Monday night line. This is understandable due to the Easter holiday. Traffic numbers had tapered off on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Given that our observation point is about 30 miles north of the border it can take 1-3 days for illegals to reach our lines. Since very few would choose to leave over the Easter holiday, Monday's scarcity was not a surprise.
We came back to camp at midnight and I slept until about 7:30 Tuesday morning. I woke up, ate some grub and headed over to the HQ to chat with folks over a cup of coffee. I signed on for the 4 to midnight shift again (I missed the day shift of 8 to 4pm).
At about 9AM, two illegals wandered into our camp. They obviously couldn't read or speak a word of English (or they would have ran for the hills) since we had Minutemen banners all over the place and we're laughing and talking about illegals we have seen in previous watches. They were carrying water bottles that were practically empty and each had a backpack that you could tell had nearly nothing in it by the way they bunched.
I was the only Spanish speaker there, so I started to talk with them. I offered them help if they were injured (they weren't), then some food, water and coffee. Our Comms leader called the Border Patrol while we sat and talked with these guys for a while, and about half and hour or 45 minutes later we had our first 2 illegal apprehensions for the day.
They just climbed right on up into the BP truck, no fuss about it. It amazes me every time an arrest is made that they don't try to run. Every arrest I've seen thus far though, they are 30-40 miles into a 50-60 mile hike and are dead-dog tired and hungry.
The Search and Rescue guys went out around Noon to check on some illegal lay-up areas a few miles behind the ranch we stayed at... Every now and then the coyotes and other illegals will leave behind a trailmate who was injured, sick or dead. I wanted to go, but didn't have the time to do so before my 4 o'clock line shift.
My second shift was considerably more active than the first one. It seems the lag in the illegal flow was beginning to expire. We formed a line on one of the ranch roads about 5 miles away from the central highway, and spaced ourselves about 200-300 yards apart, in pairs. This way we can cover about 2-3 miles horizontally with one line shift in the valley. It may be a wide valley (50+ miles), but the number of easily passable trails is well monitored and documented. We centered on a major migrant line and waited for dusk.
One thing that struck me was the disparity in radio ettiquette between some folks in the Minutemen movement versus other folks. We have an SOP for communications and everyone gets trained on comm SOP prior to everyshift since most folks are only down for a couple days at a time and new faces are constantly on the line.
Never fails though, that some sissy eastern tenderfoot who doesn't know jack about open country, communications, observation, security or hunting, is always blathering on with their radio. There was this guy from Ohio that was driving me absolutely crazy with his inability to maintain radio silence.
I had a pair of pretty nice FRS/GMRS radios, for which I had one earbud. I programmed it to scan our "local" line channel as well as the more powerful repeater channel, so I could hear activity from any necessary source. I kept the earbud in my ear at the lowest volume setting from which I could still get information... If I used the system speaker then the sound could literally carry nearly half a mile.
Ohio tenderfoot just wouldn't shut up though. He also had the "roger" and "tone" functions running on his radios, so the end of transmissions he made would automatically beep on all the handsets in the field, and everytime his picked up a sound would beep too. I was hearing beeps up and down the line most of the night until the line leader went and remedied the problem. Of course this meant that the line leader had to fire up his car (with headlights and loud engine) and drive a mile, leaving a dust cloud as a signal.
It's amazing how one stupid person can spoil a watch. Illegals may be poor and unintelligent, but they ain't dumb. They can hear.
I also suspect that the coyotes have a new technique based on our poor radio ettiquette. They carry FRS radios similar to ours. They scan for our chatter constantly, and know our unencrypted central repeater channel. But... I think they are pushing that annoying button that sounds like a telephone ring, every couple of miles as they walk, and then listen for our receiving handsets to make that noise. I heard that ring half a dozen times during the night, and even a stupid naiive easterner wouldn't do that. The signal was always faint... I would guess 3-4 miles away by the signal quality, and I am glad I had my earbud so as not to fall into that particular ploy. But, only about 1/3 the line had control over their audio output from their radios. I could hear posts to the west of me, almost 1/2 a mile away. Very frustrating.
The Tuesday watch ended up yielding 10 illegal apprehensions and 20 more reported sightings. A group of 7-10 IA's crossed our line a little bit after sunset, around 8PM or so. We lit them up with 10million candle power lights and they scattered. BP came by and picked up 3 of them, then relayed their trajectory to units further north. Closer to about 11PM a larger group of about 20 tried us a little further to the west... probably part of the same party that tried earlier (remember the phone tones I was talking about?). We held the line by shifting a couple of folks to the west and by monitoring them with thermal cameras. BP came by and were able to detain another 7 before they retreated further south and out of our vision and BP's reach at that road. We don't know if BP detained the remaining 7 IA's from earlier or the remaining 13 from the 11PM sighting. We ended up counting 10 apprehensions and 30 sightings for that watch.
We broke the line down at midnight and headed back to camp. You can't catch them all.
I woke up on Wednesday about 8AM, made breakfast and broke down my camp. I had to go back home today and didn't have time for an 8 hour line shift, but a couple of the SAR guys invited me out with them to one of the lay-up areas.
We drove out to the closest foot-trail to the layup and walked about 2 miles in. The amount of scattered clothing and equipment is just staggering. The environmental impact of these illegals is abysmal... it would take decades from TODAY if the flow stopped immediately to repair.
New clothing was discarded randomly along the trail. Some of it was VERY SMALL clothing. The pants couldn't have been more than 18" long on the outside seam. I'd guess those pants belonged to a 4 year old. Dozens and dozens of bottles of the mexican version of Pedialyte. All appearances demonstrate that several children had been taken down this trail, recently. The bottles were missing their caps, yet had not had any dust blown inside them. Less than a day probably.
The shoes these people wear for such an excursion is disheartening. Converse All Stars, rubberized slippers, fake designer boots, cheap sneakers. It's all out there. Discarded underwear, women's and men's, some of it cut or torn. Rape or sexual assault? Probably.
The number of backpacks out there is staggering. At one layup area, there must have been THOUSANDS of discarded backpacks. They were all small packs, less than 2000 cubic inches... most closer in size to a hydration bladder carrier (sans the bladder). There were enough packs to completely cover about 1/2 of a football field. End to end, touching each other, completely covering the desert so that little-to-no sand was visible between them. Hundreds of heavy duty garbage bags that the IA's use for sleeping bags or rain cover.
