NYtimes.com
TOMBSTONE, Ariz., March 31 - Walter McCarty, an 82-year-old retired Marine sergeant, says he is looking for adventure on the most porous part of the American border with Mexico. So, on Thursday, he signed up for the Minuteman Project, a volunteer patrol in search of furtive immigrants making the desert crossing into the United States.
"I hope to go out on patrols at night, find some illegals," said Mr. McCarty, who had his .38-caliber pistol strapped to his leg as he stood outside the citizen patrol's makeshift headquarters here in Tombstone, the town where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday engaged in a shootout with the Clanton gang in 1881. "I need some excitement. And this is better than sitting at home all day watching rattlesnakes crawl out of the den."
Led by Chris Simcox, a 44-year-old former kindergarten teacher from Los Angeles who accuses the federal government of turning a blind eye to the flow of illegal immigrants, the Minuteman Project is an effort to post 1,000 volunteers across 23 miles of border. It has angered Hispanics and many business and government leaders in this border county, aroused the Mexican government and prompted a warning from President Bush against vigilante action.
Still, for days, an assortment of volunteers, most of them retirees, has been trickling into the headquarters, on Toughnut Street, to get assignments that will begin Saturday and last a month. Reporters from as far away as Europe and Mexico have also descended.
Posted by Suzanne at April 1, 2005