Minutemen Begin Organizing in Texas

Goliad, TX:

Ranchers fed up with illegal immigration from Mexico planned to meet Monday with a volunteer border-patrol group in one of the first welcoming signs members of the Minutemen Project have received in Texas.

Owners of thousands of acres of South Texas ranchland say immigrants have damaged their land and made the town unsafe. They say the answer may be the Minutemen, who in April monitored the Arizona-Mexico border and reported suspected illegal crossings to authorities.

I thought I should also highlight this paragraph:

Laredo police spokesman Juan Rivera said any citizen has a right to contact police about illegal immigration. But he said officers will crack down on anyone who doesn't have proper concealed handgun documentation, is trespassing or disrupting police duties on the border.

Bias? Number 1: Not all the Minutemen in Arizona went armed. So why automatically assume that all the Minutemen are carrying concealed? Number 2: Unlike Arizona (and as this article points out), they will be patrolling privately owned land with permission of the land-owners. If the owners of said property give them permission to carry arms, they don't need concealed carry licenses. Number 3: Juan Rivera may want to brush up on his law, especially the recently passed HB823, which makes it legal for any of these guys to keep a concealed handgun (or any other firearm, for that matter) in their personal vehicles while travelling to and from their patrols. The only legal option for prohibiting any of them from being armed is specific prohibition by the land-owner.

Also I would like to reference a previous post, noting that Laredo is the U.S. side of the same city as Nuevo Laredo.

UPDATE: Here are some other recent articles regarding the Minuteman Project.

Significantly, the Minuteman Project hasn't gone away -- Editorial from the Williamsport, PA Sun-Gazette.

Only Chief Chamberlain has the guts to control immigration -- Commentary from the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Lawmakers join debate over border's Minutemen -- Report from the Palm Springs, CA Desert Sun.

Border arrests on rise -- AP report from the Albuquerque, NM Tribune.

UPDATE 2: A post from the forum of HispanicBusiness.com points out that:

For five years, the Juárez cartel has been battling its archrival, the Gulf cartel, for control of drug routes into the United States--a bloody feud that has turned parts of the Texas-Mexico border into a virtual war zone. Most coveted of those routes is Interstate 35, which extends from the banks of the Rio Grande to the shores of Lake Superior.

And..

"Dallas is the new Miami for transiting drugs," said Mr. Jordan, former head of the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center, which studies the drug trade. "Drug traffickers kill for I-35."

And finally:

Laredo is the busiest land border crossing into the United States for both legal and illegal cargo, most of which is funneled up I-35.

The highway, which begins in Laredo and runs through Dallas before ending 1,550 miles later in Duluth, Minn., near the Canadian border, has become the traffickers' route of choice in the most lucrative drug market in the world.

"Let's say you want to transport 2,000 pounds of marijuana, or cocaine, to the U.S.," said Mr. Jordan, the former DEA agent. "You get 10 or 20 cars on I-35, and maybe you lose one load, but you still get 1,800 pounds across. The odds are with you."

UPDATE 3 (or, the fundemantal interconnectedness of all things) -- Los Zetas at the Immigration Blog:

The Intelligence Bulletin we obtained says the Zetas are responsible for hundreds of violent drug-related murders. It says they've executed journalists, murdered people in Dallas, McAllen and Laredo, Texas. They even detained two DEA agents and recently they've shot at Border Patrol agents. At the Arizona border with Mexico agents are already seeing a major increase in violence.