Apparently, Mexican illegal immigrants have become the latest threat to U.S. security. Streams of Mexican illegals are believed to be risking death from dehydration, heat stroke and gun-slinging vigilantes to cross the desert into the U.S. to terrorize the American people.
 
Or, at least, this is the sentiment of the vigilante groups patrolling the U.S. - Mexico border in Arizona and Texas. These groups, most notably the Civil Homeland Defense, Ranch Rescue and American Border Patrol (not to be confused with the government run U.S. Border Patrol), have taken up unofficial patrolling along our border in recent months.
 
All of these groups were formed under the philosophy that immigrants have no right to poison the country with their culture, language and anything else they may bring with them. Perhaps the members of the Civil Homeland Defense, Ranch Rescue or American Border Patrol have forgotten that the reason they have the land they do is because their European immigrant ancestors took the land in 1848 from Mexico in the Mexican-American war.
 
Jack Foote, the national spokesman for Ranch Rescue, the group that is mainly concerned with property rights, makes no apologies for his group’s actions. “We’re as nice and civil as the trespasser wants to make it,” Foote said. “In every case so far, they’ve taken one look at our volunteers and gone running and screaming off the property like school girls.”
 
Apparently only school girls are afraid of gun-toting Wyatt Earp wanna-be’s. Ironically enough, the Civil Homeland Defense was organized in the frontier town of Tombstone, Ariz., where Wyatt Earp had his famous showdown at the O.K. Corral. This legacy lives on today in Arizona where it is legal to carry firearms around like cell phones.
 
Since 1995, over 2000 men, women and children have died attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. These people are not risking the lives of their children to steal land or to blow up future World Trade Centers. Vigilante groups such as the ones mentioned above are preying on Americans’ fears of immigrants and terrorism since Sept. 11 to pool support for their prejudices and intolerance for the suffering of others.
 
Vigilante groups claim that immigrants conduct drug trafficking across the border. While this is true in some cases, the majority of immigrants make the dangerous trip across the border because they are desperately seeking a means to feed their family. Any person affiliated with, say, Ranch Rescue would go to the same lengths if their family’s lives were on the line. And, any of these people would defend their actions based on their family’s need. To say that all Mexican illegal immigrants should be treated badly because some are drug traffickers is comparable to treating all Muslims badly because some are terrorists.
 
Adolfo Vega, a 40-year-old corn farmer from central Mexico sums up the situation very well. “You’re always scared because you hear so many things, from armed ranchers to bad smugglers,” Vega said. “We know we’re risking our lives, but it is worth it. We’re motivated by our hunger.”
 
Is there any greater motivation than that of survival?

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