One Minuteman Project Volunteer's Declaration of Independence

[In light of Independence Day, 2012, the following reprint is included posthumously of Mike McGarry's commentary published on June 14, 2005.]

Having royally had it, on April 1, 2005, hundreds of peaceful but righteously indignant civilian volunteers of the month-long Minuteman Project border watch assembled in the storied southeastern Arizona city of Tombstone to petition their government for a redress of their grievances--probably thinking they'd catch some hell for doing so, but not knowing the holy-half of it.

Those grievances include a long train of abuses and usurpations by the royals: President Bush (and the several previous presidents) and the regal career politicians of the U.S. Congress. The imperials have abdicated their responsibilities and violated their oaths of office by creating and perpetuating, through their actions and inactions, one of the most lawless, violent and chaotic border regions in the world.

By deploying citizen observers, "undocumented border patrol agents," to act as a "neighbor watch" along a 23-mile section of the notorious 262-miles of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, the immediate goals of the Minuteman Project's organizers were to yank the covers off the shameful failure of border security and to demonstrate to the royals how easy it would be to fulfill their first obligation: the protection of their citizens. To those ends, in the words of the project's cofounders, it was "mission accomplished" for the project.

But royalty has no limits to its imperial arrogance. President Bush attacked the good citizens of the Minutemen Project as "vigilantes," during a time when project organizers and volunteers were the subjects of scores of racist death threats, lies and damned lies by the open-borders lobby, castigations by august elected officials and vilifications by most of the mainstream press. Concurrently, one of the most pernicious pieces of amnesty legislation--which would have been amnesty number eight--for illegal border criminals was being attempted by the princely U.S. Congress, to courtly applause.

Ours is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny. To prove this, let these facts be submitted to a candid world, including but not limited to:

They have abdicated government here by declaring us out of their protection:

• The president called the Minutemen 'vigilantes" while they were under constant threats of attack and death.
• At best, only one-in-four border invaders is intercepted. Over a seven-month period, in the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector alone, more than 20,000 convicted murderers, rapists, child predators and the like, along with those wanted on fugitive warrants for those crimes, were intercepted. That means more than 60,000 such foreign criminals made it through.
• Other than Mexicans (OTM's), including those from terror-sponsoring countries, are allowed to continue into the interior of the U.S. under an "catch-and-release" policy, with the promise from the intruders that they will appear at a hearing in the future. Almost none does.
• One-thousand seven-hundred-and-ninety (1,790) new border patrol agents were striped by president Bush from the 2,000 recommended for this year by the Commission on Homeland Security. The remaining 210 new agents would not cover even the losses of agents to transfers, retirements and from those quitting because of being fed up.

They have consorted with the potentates, dictators, oligarchs and sovereigns and have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws:

• An estimated 3,000 fugitive illegal-alien murder suspects, including accused cop killers, are avoiding U.S. prosecution, because Mexico will not extradite on capital crimes.
• The U.S. government has refused to return illegal-alien criminal to their home countries because "those countries won't take them back." They have instead released those criminal back into the unsuspecting U.S. population, with tens of thousands repeating their crimes against Americans.

They have been dismissive of the overwhelming opinions of the People:

• Poll after poll shows American of all stripes want the borders secured-NOW!

They have failed to for call forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union and repel invasions, as called for in the U.S. Constitution.

They have excited domestic insurrection amongst us by endeavoring to bring on the inhabitants of our frontier:

• Time Magazine has estimated that three-million illegal aliens from all over the world successfully break into the country, annually.

They have refused their assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good:

• Almost the entire U.S. Criminal Code relating to violations of immigration law essentially has been ignored.
• When referring to illegal aliens whose cross the border via the Rio Grande river, president Bush was quoted in Boy Genius: "Hell, if they'll walk across the Big Bend, we want 'em." (pg 73)

They have kept among us a foreign standing army:

• It is estimate that a standing army of 850,000 illegal alien foreign gangsters, thugs, punks and terrorist, including MS-13, the Mexican Mafia, the Russian Mafia and many other criminal organizations, are now entrenched in cities and towns throughout the U.S..

They have failed to establish justice; they have failed to ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare; they have failed to faithfully discharge the duties of their offices; they have failed to exercise their best abilities to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, thereby giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.

Minuteman-like civilian border patrols were carried out during World War II. My father, uncles and grandfather, then citizen residents of the border town of Bisbee, Ariz., were patrol members. There was no continental invasion then, but there is now, with millions from all over the world pouring across the borders, including some of the world's most despicable, dangerous and loathsome: people from terror-sponsoring countries, heavily armed international drug traffickers, agents of international organized crime, along with traffickers of kidnapped women and children headed for sex-slavery in the United States.

But when as long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

On April 30, 2005, Minuteman Project cofounder Chris Simcox said:

I therefore, as a representative of the People of the United States, in their name, solemnly declare our right to be free and independent to do anything we damned well please to secure our rights, our properties, our fortunes, our futures, our posterity, our lives and our country.

Mike McGarry was a spokesman for the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. He was a Minuteman Project media relations volunteer.