'Minutemen' Volunteer to Watch U.S. Border

NACO, Ariz., April 4, 2005 — -- Ivan Dummick and his brother-in-law, Scott Inbody, leaned back in their lawn chairs and trained their binoculars on the Mexican border only a hundred feet away.

"My brother-in-law calls me and he says, 'Hey, you want to go to Arizona and have an adventure?' So I said, sure, let's go," Dummick said. The two men -- along with nearly 400 other civilians -- call themselves "Minutemen." The group is composed of mostly retired men who have formed an all-volunteer civilian border patrol.

For the next 30 days, they will rotate shifts around the clock to keep an eye on the Arizona-Mexico border. They're looking for illegal immigrants and smugglers who cross through a porous stretch of sun-baked desert in southeast Arizona. "I think it's a very high priority after 9/11," Inbody said.

The group was organized by Chris Simcox, a 44-year-old former kindergarten teacher from Los Angeles who moved to Tombstone, Ariz., a few years ago, bought the local newspaper and took on the illegal immigration issue. "This area is one of the hottest spots in the country," he told ABC News during a recent tour of the 20-mile stretch of the border where the Minutemen have deployed. "There are hundreds of 'illegals' over that border just waiting to cross," he added.

Many of the volunteers are armed with handguns, which are legal in Arizona as long as the weapon is not concealed. Simcox said he has given the men strict orders not to use their guns. "I told everyone we're to spot and report," he explained. "We're to be vigilant, alert, observant and to report suspicious activity to appropriate authorities."

Border Patrol agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection are the "appropriate authority" along this stretch of border with 2,200 agents assigned here and another 500 to be deployed by September. But Simcox said they have failed to keep illegal immigrants from crossing. In fact, the 370-mile Arizona border is considered the most violated section of the 2000-mile-long southern boundary of the United States. Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants caught last year, more than half were intercepted in Arizona.