‘Brothers’ Heading to Heat of Action

I guess you’d call them true sunshine soldiers. Or summer patriots.

At the very least, it’s really going to be warm down there. Along with the commitment, better bring the sunscreen and the big hat.

I’m referring to the band of brothers who say they’re heading for San Diego this summer to patrol the U.S.-Mexican border. When they see an “illegal alien” crossing into California, or believe they have seen one, their mission will be to notify U.S. Border Patrol officials. The brothers will stand down and let the professionals do their jobs.

If the notion strikes you as a bit crackpot, that’s your problem. If you wonder why presumably rational, everyday Americans would volunteer to bivouac out in the middle of nowhere and intervene in the government’s business, then perhaps you just don’t understand your fellow citizens.

I think I understand them, if only because this job has acquainted me with the passion attached to the illegal-immigration issue. It gets people’s blood boiling, and while some are content to confine their dislike to conversation, a percentage of our fellow citizens is moved to action. They are locked and loaded. Next stop: the border.

What you may see as a fool’s errand, they see as a knight’s errand.

Andy Ramirez of Chino is the brains behind the effort, which he has dubbed Friends of the Border Patrol. I called him to find out how many Orange County volunteers had signed up, and at first, Ramirez said “several.” That doesn’t sound like much local commitment, but Ramirez hastened to add that his organization isn’t breaking down the numbers by locale.

Ramirez was heavily involved in the failed “Save Our State” ballot initiative effort last year that would have turned the screws on illegal immigrants. That it didn’t get enough signatures to qualify and that most major California elected officials shied away from it tells you that the issue isn’t paramount.

I asked Ramirez, 37, to convince me that his organization is a good idea. He affably picked up the bit and ran with it, saying the federal government has cut back its border patrols and that his volunteers hope to pick up the slack. They hope to stop people who may be terrorists, drug smugglers or those involved in trafficking people for “slave” labor in America.

The volunteer patrollers would work, in shifts, around the clock seven days a week. The rotations, Ramirez says, will depend “on the numbers, and the heat and their age and sensitivity.” He concedes it will get hot under the 110-degree sun and that the effort will have a shelf life of unknown length, because the volunteer force probably won’t remain intact forever.

So, aside from letting the volunteers vent, what’s the point?

Ramirez insists the effort, scheduled to start in August, will stem the illegal tide on the ground. But perhaps just as important, he says, the goal is to pressure the government to get more serious.

He blames President Bush for closing his eyes about the border situation and for imperiling America.

That probably won’t gain much traction with the public, but Ramirez is nothing if not serious about sticking it to Bush. “You change this man’s name to Clinton, and he’s impeached,” Ramirez says, claiming dereliction of duty.

Of his 400 volunteers so far, Ramirez says, three-fourths are retired military or law enforcement personnel. “I’m not going to have a bunch of hotheads,” he says. “If anyone exhibits that kind of behavior, we’ll ask them to leave.”

I’m pretty sure I’m in the majority in opposing unlimited immigration. I wish someone had a plan that could regulate the number of newcomers each year, if only to defuse the potentially explosive issues of illegal immigration and its social effects.

No one in power seems to know how to do that.

So, into the void steps Ramirez and “Friends.” He assures me they know exactly what they’re doing.

Crazy from the heat? Just wait till August.

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.