One Man’s Convictions Launched a Border Crusade

Amid the lush canyons in southern Orange County, a retired accountant living quietly on his wife’s humble salary and Social Security disability benefits cooked up a plan that drew attention from two presidents and reporters around the globe last week..

Last fall, Vietnam veteran James Gilchrist, 56, was listening to George Putnam’s talk show on KCAA-AM (1050). He often listens to conservative radio shows in his small home office in an Aliso Viejo planned community, where he proudly displays his Purple Heart and dog tags.

He heard a guest on the show, Chris Simcox, complain about lax border enforcement. His words resonated with Gilchrist, who long wondered why communities in Orange County teemed with people who don’t speak English.

Gilchrist called Simcox, a veteran crusader against illegal immigrants at the Arizona border.

“Things came out that were in my head swimming around for years,” Gilchrist said. “It was a culmination of fears building up.”

Gilchrist vowed to get volunteers to guard a border he believed the federal government had neglected. He quickly found hundreds of supporters through the Internet, among them fellow veterans and retired U.S. Border Patrol agents.

And so the Minuteman Project was born. A combination of citizen posse and media attention-getter, Gilchrist’s brainchild took shape April 1 on an unforgiving strip of Arizona desert, with nearly as many reporters as volunteers.

The Minutemen plan to stay through the month, alerting U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents when they spot people illegally crossing into the United States.

That Gilchrist and Simcox chose Arizona is no surprise. The Arizona border became more popular among immigrants and drug smugglers after barriers were improved at borders in Texas and California. Nearly half of the 1.1 million apprehensions of illegal immigrants last year were in southern Arizona, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Renewed attention to illegal border crossings helped propel passage of Arizona’s Proposition 200, which requires proof of immigration status to qualify for some state benefits, including general assistance, short-term crisis aid and child-care assistance. Voters approved the measure 56% to 44% in November.

The Minutemen, who arrived with guns, private planes and night-vision goggles, have promised a strict “no contact” rule in approaching immigrants. Their presence on a 23-mile strip in southeast Arizona nonetheless alarmed local and federal officials, Mexican authorities and immigrants’ advocates. Days before the volunteers arrived, the Department of Homeland Security declared it would double air surveillance and transfer 534 agents to the area, a 20% increase in its force there. The aircraft and nearly half the new agents have already arrived, although Border Patrol officials say they were planned prior to the Minuteman action.

Mexican President Vicente Fox has increased troop strength along the border and asked the U.S. to protect border crossers from harm. President Bush, who has called for a temporary workers’ visa program, called the group vigilantes.

For Gilchrist, who says he is haunted by the images of friends who died in combat more than 30 years ago, the campaign has become a new war.

Within arm’s reach of his desk in his home office is a published book, the size of a telephone directory, listing all the U.S. service personnel killed in action. He highlighted in yellow the names of all Marines who served with him in Vietnam. Gilchrist said he was a corporal in charge of spotting enemy positions.

Many of his comrades died in an ambush south of Khe Sanh in 1968, he said. It is in large part because of this vivid memory that Gilchrist fights on.

Framed 5-by-7-inch photographs of six fallen comrades hang in an entryway between Gilchrist’s garage and kitchen.

“I don’t want this country to end up like they did, dead on that battlefield,” said Gilchrist. “Too many immigrants will divide our country. We are not going to have a civil war now, but we could.”

Gilchrist hails from a military family. He said his father served 27 years in the U.S. Navy, in combat areas during World War II and the Korean War and stateside during the Vietnam War. He retired in 1968. His mother helped train Navy fighter pilots during World War II.

Gilchrist, who enlisted, spent 13 months in Vietnam, where he was wounded in the face by gunfire. It changed his life. Years later, he said, a rupture in the dura, the material that covers the brain led to three brain surgeries between 1986 and 1990. Doctors assumed that the rupture was related to his wartime wounds, Gilchrist said.

Gilchrist worked for years as an accountant and closed his own practice in 1995. A native of Rhode Island, he has been married for 10 years; his wife has two adult children, one of whom married a Mexican immigrant.

Gilchrist made his home in Orange County, living in several cities before buying in Aliso Viejo nearly 10 years ago, before prices shot up, he explained. Free during the day, he spent months doing home renovations, including installing hardwood floors.

While he worked, he listened to talk radio. It stirred up his feelings about cities where he had lived, including Westminster, which now has a large Vietnamese community.

“We are becoming a country run by mob rule. Whoever moves in rules,” Gilchrist said. “I’m worried about the illegal immigration. I can see our country splitting apart.”

Immigrants’ advocates argue that Gilchrist, Simcox and others tend to use hyperbole that cannot be supported by statistics. For example, the Minuteman Project website says “tens of millions” of illegal aliens are “invading” the country.

There are an estimated 8 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., according to the Department of Homeland Security. It is difficult to estimate how many cross each year, but authorities made 1.1 million apprehensions along the border last year.

Said Leo Chavez, anthropology professor at UC Irvine: “The issue of illegal immigration is political. All we need to do is allow more people to enter this country legally.”

Local Arizona ranchers, meanwhile, remain leery of outsiders. But some said they appreciated the increased attention to the illegal immigrants crossing the land they own or lease from the federal government.

Ron Stone, a rancher in Douglas, Ariz., who brought a single-engine plane to help look for illegal immigrants, said Gilchrist “is getting people to pay attention to us. We need that.”

Though prone to vitriolic language -- “Illegal immigrants will destroy this country,” he said during a recent interview -- Gilchrist often softens his tone. “These people are coming here for work,” he added after some reflection. “We need to ask why that is happening.”

But his thoughts inevitably flow to Vietnam. “What ... did all these people die for in World War II, Korea and Vietnam?” he asked. “It was not so we would turn into a country of mayhem.”

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Formative events

* About thirty years ago, James Gilchrist worked for 18 months as a newspaper reporter for the Providence Journal Bulletin in Rhode Island. He left journalism because, he said, it seemed unusually cutthroat.

* In the early 1980s, Gilchrist’s car was struck by a car driven by two Latino men; he said he believes they were illegal immigrants because their car’s plates did not match the vehicle they were issued to.

* On Sept. 18, 2001, Gilchrist wrote letters to senators, congressman and President Bush blaming them for the deaths that month at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because they had failed to stop the terrorists before they acted.