Borderline Catastrophe

The Minuteman Project is an outgrowth of Civil Homeland Defense, a seasoned paramilitary border group. Civil Homeland Defense was organized by Chris Simcox and had been patrolling the southern desert for at least two years prior to the organization of the Minuteman Project.

Civil Homeland Defense is comprised mainly of southeastern
Arizona ranchers. All members are required to have a weapon and a concealed-carry permit. While stories have circulated that illegal immigrants detained by Civil Homeland Defense had, in the past, been physically abused by the group, no charges have been brought against Simcox or any member of his group. This is because complaints filed by immigrants were being suppressed by Cochise County Sheriff, Larry Dever, who supported Simcox's activities and those of Civil Homeland Defense.

Simcox modeled his patrol group after an ultra-paramilitary Texas based group called, Ranch Rescue. Ranch Rescue is run by Jack Foote, a retired Army officer, who has ties to Simcox and the Minuteman Project. Ranch Rescue restricts its activities to private ranch land on the Texas-Mexico border. Local police have reported that immigrants detained by Ranch Rescue are frequently treated in an inhumane manner, violating the civil rights of Mexican Nationals.

For instance, in 2003, Casey Nethercott, a self-admitted neo-nazi, was one of two Ranch Rescue members who were arrested for illegally detaining immigrants and for pistol-whipping one of the immigrants. Upon Nethercott’s arrest, Sheriff Erasmo Alarcon of Texas said, “We’ve never seen anything like this before...the way they are treating these people is inhumane. It won’t be tolerated.” Nethercott was charged with aggravated assault and unlawful restraint for the 2003 incident. However, he was released in March, 2005 on $25,000 bail and was a free man awaiting trial at the time of the April 1, 2005, Minuteman rally in Tombstone.

Although Ranch Rescue claims only to be interested in “defending private property rights for all Americans, regardless of race, color, creed or religion”, Ranch Rescue founder, Jack Foote, has known ties to white supremacist groups such as National Alliance, the nation’s largest neo-nazi group. At the time of the Minuteman rally in Tombstone, Nethercott, a Ranch Rescue member, was planning to take armored vehicles along with his core group of volunteers, to patrol the border. Nethercott declared, “when this Minuteman thing is over, if it doesn’t work, we’re going to come out here and close the border with machine guns”.