Minutemen sparks controversy over borders

Protester stood with their backs towards Simcox.

Minuteman co-founder Chris Simcox spoke to a full house and to the backs of protestors Tuesday night in his speech hosted by the John Carroll University College Conservatives. While Simcox spoke of securing U.S. borders from illegal immigrants, a number of JCU students, community members and faculty held protest signs claiming the speech to be hateful.

Simcox recognized that no human being is illegal, but that “in a civilized society, human actions can be deemed illegal by society or by God.” He spoke to the ways in which illegal immigrants injure state resources through their criminal behavior and the government failure to secure porous borders.

Simcox said that 23 to 27 percent of illegal immigrants are in prison for “doing the crimes that Americans won’t do.” He encouraged the audience to visit the borders to witness the “terrible situation going on and our civic duty to do something about it.” Simcox noted that borders are littered with drug cartels and sex trafficking has become a dangerous trend among illegal immigrants, which are harmful to both sides of the border.

Simcox termed the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps as the “nation’s largest neighborhood watch dog” committed to providing safe and legal passage for those wishing to enter the country. He said that the MCDC protects the borders from the illegal immigrants he named as criminals, a civic duty he claims the government has ignored.

Simcox cited an incident in which several illegal immigrants were injured in a car accident on U.S. soil and were immediately transported to a hospital to receive free medical care.

Tensions in the room increased when Simcox called this incident one of “universal health care” to which protestors were offended. Simcox said that Mexican borders are attractive to Cubans who “can cross the borders without even getting their feet wet.”

While the southern border controversies thrive in the limelight, Simcox said that the MCDC receives requests from Native Americans to secure the northern borders due to the fear of drug dealers entering the country from Canada.

The U.S is a popular destination, but open borders seems to sacrifice the quality of the country, according to Simcox, who compares illegal immigrants to foreign terrorists. The criminal illegal aliens “are as vicious as al Qaeda,” he said.

Simcox suggested that the remedy for border control is to double fences, engage in dialogue with the Mexican government to dissolve drug cartels and to bring illegal immigrants safely back to either their hometowns or legally through to the borders.

He noted that the common misconception of illegal immigrants is that they perform the jobs that American citizens will not take.

Several students wore T-shirts and held signs that boasted the mantra of human rights, and some of them were expressed in Spanish. When Simcox’s speech exceeded an hour, a JCU professor stood up, from the audience, to say that the speech should cease.

Professor Sara Schiavoni of the JCU political science department served as the moderator for the event, fielding students’ questions and editing potential profane content. To a question regarding whether Simcox’s cause was controversial, Simcox blamed media and college professors for “fomenting the issue and enjoying bias by creating a boogy-man.”

After Simcox vehemently promoted the use of non-violence by the MCDC at the borders, a student asked why the anti-immigration leader called others to “bear arms” to secure the fences in his magazine, The Tombstone Tumbleweed.

“That term was a simple and clever marketing tool to call attention to the issue and attract the media,” Simcox said.