Citizen Border Patrols and the Law

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
New York Times

For years, Roger Barnett has holstered a pistol to his hip, tucked an assault rifle in his truck and set out over the scrub brush on his thousands of acres of ranchland near the border in southeastern Arizona to hunt.

Hunt illegal immigrants, that is, often chronicled by the news media.

"They're flooding across, invading the place," he told the ABC program Nightline this spring. "They're going to bring their families, their wives, and they're going to bring their kids. We don't need them."

But now, after boasting of having captured 12,000 illegal crossers on land he owns or leases from the state and emerging as one of the earliest and most prominent of the self-appointed border watchers, Barnett finds himself the prey.

Immigrant rights groups have filed lawsuits, accusing him of harassing and unlawfully imprisoning people he has confronted on his ranch.

•One suit pending in federal court accuses him, his wife and brother of pointing guns at 16 illegal immigrants they intercepted, threatening them with dogs and kicking one woman in the group.
•Another suit, accusing Barnett of threatening two Mexican-American hunters and three young children with an assault rifle and insulting them with racial epithets, ended Wednesday with a jury awarding the hunters $98,750 in damages.
The court actions are the latest example of immigrant rights groups trying to curb armed border monitoring groups by going after their money, if not their guns. They have won civil judgments in Texas, and this year two illegal Salvadoran immigrants who had been held against their will took possession of a 70-acre southern Arizona ranch after winning a case last year.

The immigrants had accused the property owner, Casey Nethercott, a former leader of the Ranch Rescue group, of menacing them with a gun in 2003. Nethercott was convicted of illegal gun possession; the Salvadorans plan to sell the property, their lawyer has said.


Ubiquitous on Web sites
But Barnett, known for dressing in military garb and caps with insignia resembling the U.S. Border Patrol's, represents a special prize to the immigrant rights groups. He is ubiquitous on Web sites, mailings and brochures put out by border monitoring groups and, with family members, was an inspiration for efforts like the Minutemen civilian border patrols.

"The Barnetts, probably more than any people in this country, are responsible for the vigilante movement as it now exists," said Mark Potok, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the groups. "They were the recipients of so much press coverage and they kept boasting, and it was out of those boasts that the modern vigilante movement sprang up."


'Breached their defense'
Jesus Romo Vejar, the lawyer for the hunting party, said their court victory Wednesday would serve notice that mistreating migrants would not pass unpunished. Although the hunters were not illegal immigrants, they contended that Barnett's treatment of them reflected his attitude and practices toward Latinos crossing his land, no matter what their legal status.

"We have really, truly breached their defense and this opens up the Barnetts to other attorneys to come in and sue him whenever he does some wrong with people," Vejar said.

Barnett had denied threatening anyone; he left the courtroom after the verdict without commenting and his lawyer, John Kelliher, also would not comment.

People who tend ranches on the border said even if they did not agree with Barnett's tactics they sympathized with his rationale.

"The illegals think they have carte blanche on his ranch," said Al Garza, the executive director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in Arizona, a civilian patrol group that, Garza says, does not detain illegal immigrants but calls in their movements to the Border Patrol. "The man has had it."

Barnett's lawyers have suggested he has acted out of a right to protect his property.

"A lease holder doesn't have the right to protect his cattle?" Kelliher asked one of the men in the hunting party, Arturo Morales, during the trial.

"I guess so, maybe," Morales replied.