To the Rescue

Their effort isn't without its own problems. By mid-October, development director Thompson will have given Cox his walking papers, reportedly after a disagreement.

Cox, who stopped returning the Pitch's phone calls in mid-October, reportedly went to Tennessee to take a job after spending most of 2006 out of work and engaged in immigration issues.

Hayes picked up the slack. In a matter of days, he took over the reins and rolled the entire Kansas City metro into the Heart of America chapter, adding target cities from Atchison to Hutchinson. s the Minutemen have grown from a handful of disgruntled radicals along the border to dozens of chapters throughout the states, their ideas have moved from the political margins to mainstream America.

Among those ideas: Undocumented immigrants are violent criminals and a threat to public safety. Undocumented workers are single-handedly eliminating the middle class and turning America into a Third World country. Mainstream Hispanic-rights groups such as La Raza are plotting a reconquista, or reconquest, of the southwestern United States.

Ideas that used to be espoused by fringe activists are now preached by suburban grandfathers and Boy Scout camp volunteers in library conference rooms.

As groups like the Minutemen have proliferated, Michele Waslin has grown accustomed to near-daily protests outside her office in New York. Waslin, the director of immigration policy research for the National Council of La Raza, has heard the rhetoric about her group being a terrorist organization.

"We've been very vocal explaining the name of the organization and describing the work that we do," she says.

In late September, Devin Burghart, a director with the Center for New Community in Chicago (a national nonprofit aimed at cultivating tolerance and opposing nativist groups), visited Kansas City to meet with local activists. On barely 48 hours' notice, they filled a back room at a local church to mount a campaign against the Minutemen. The resulting coalition, representing a host of area immigrants' rights organizations, is still determining its focus, but organizers say that more than 200 people already have signed a petition that began circulating by e-mail last month.

"We are united in rejecting the politics of fear, hatred and armed vigilantism," the petition reads. "We encourage all people in the Kansas City area to join with us in letting the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps know that their vilification of immigrants, their paramilitary actions, and their outrageous conspiracy theories are not welcome."

(Hayes says he's aware of the petition. He scoffs at its claims.)

Burghart says presenting an opposing voice is critical because the Minuteman movement is spreading. A year ago, he counted 37 anti-immigration groups in 25 states. By September of this year, he knew of more than 220 groups in 42 states. Nearly 70 of those groups are affiliated with the Minutemen, he says.

"We were very concerned from the get-go that it [the Minuteman movement] would become something bigger than it initially started, and, unfortunately, it's lived up to that billing," he says.

The organization's actions have spurred comparisons with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Burghart notes that the KKK established a group called Border Watch in the late 1970s with an identical aim and similar rhetoric. In Arizona and Arkansas, the Minutemen seem to have condoned the presence of Confederate flags at their rallies and former neo-Nazi organizers within their ranks.

The KKK is openly condemned as racist and holds little political clout. The Minutemen, however, have begun to influence public policy at all levels of government.

For instance, the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park is one of a growing number of cities nationwide that have recently passed ordinances designed to make the city inhospitable to undocumented immigrants by fining their landlords and employers.

Action is mounting at the state level as well. Interpreting data from the National Association of State Legislatures, Burghart counts approximately 550 pieces of what he terms "anti-immigrant legislation" introduced in 32 states this year.

Even President George W. Bush has conceded to demands pushed by the Minutemen. Last month, Bush signed a bill to erect a fence along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

"If it hadn't been for the Minutemen, there wouldn't be any fence at all, built by us or the government," Griffin tells the Pitch.

The Minutemen have also provoked confrontations far from the border. In states such as Oregon and Washington, Minutemen and immigrants' rights advocates have come to blows as the organization has attempted to monitor day-labor or construction sites.

And the group's impact may extend far past controversial legislation and skirmishes at day-labor sites. "This is a singularly important issue for defining who and what we are as a nation," Burghart says.

Tom Franiak, the Minuteman chapter leader in Springfield, Missouri, doesn't disagree. "I think we have a great country, but if we keep heading down this road, trying for political correctness and making sure nobody gets their feelings hurt, we'll end up looking like something we don't want to look like."