Saturday, April 30. The Minuteman Project held a wrap-up event near Sierra Vista, Arizona today to thank everyone involved with this phase of the project. We sincerely thank all of our volunteers, office staff, the Cochise County (AZ) Sheriff Department, local residents and most of all, our Border Patrol officers on the ground.

Several of our leaders spent this week in Washington, DC, where they took our message to Senators, Representatives, and the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, saying, "We have proven that ordinary citizens sitting in lawn chairs on the border can shut down illegal border traffic. We will not stop; we will not be deterred. We will continue to secure our borders until releived by our military and National guard."

The April Minuteman Project border monitoring phase has completed. The Minuteman Project is no longer taking volunteers for April - but we are accepting volunteers for upcoming projects.

As our favorite Governor once said, "I'll be back," and so will we - larger and stronger, doing the job our President and Congress refuse to do.

Thursday, April 28. Santa Clara (CA) County employee gets "counseled" for issuing death threat to MMP. ACLU-trained legal observers nowhere to be found. See MMP alert.

Wednesday, April 27. See updated border apprehension statistics.

Tuesday, April 26. Volunteers are arriving daily. See our photo journal.

Sunday, April 24. Minuteman Project leaders leave for Washington, DC, where they will be "demanding - not asking for - secure and safe borders." See our April 24 news release. Volunteers - please join us for our final week of border monitoring!

Saturday, April 23. Volunteers continue to arrive. Volunteers go through several Civil Homeland Defense training sessions and are then placed along the border to do the job our government refuses to do. See our photo journal for the latest pictures.

Friday, April 22. Registration of new volunteers continues under Civil Homeland Defense (their website will be updated in the near future). Join us now - your help is needed! The weather has cooled off this weekend, with cloud cover making for pleasant conditions for border observation.

Thursday, April 21. Border monitoring continues under the direction of Civil Homeland Defense - here are today's photos.

Tuesday, April 19. Update and clarification. At a major press conference on Monday, April 18, at the office of the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper, the Minuteman Project (MMP) announced today that due to our tremendous success, we are reorganizing. See this April 19 news release, letters of explanation from Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, and also this article.

Border monitoring will continue under the name and strict direction of Civil Homeland Defense (CHD). If you had planned on contacting the MMP to volunter, you now need to contact Civil Homeland Defense. If you are already registered with the MMP for the month of April, your registration is already assigned to Civil Homeland Defense and you should arrive as planned.

Civil Homeland Defense will continue to place America's "minuteman" on the border. There are plans underway to expand to adjoining states with a comprehensive border monitoring program this fall. If our own elected officials will not defend our nation's border, American citizens will.

Sunday, April 17. Border monitoring continues and new volunteers are being trained and placed at monitoring stations. (See photos).

U.S. Border Patrol Local 2544 notes on their website that:

We want to make it clear because we've had a lot of questions about this.....we have not had one single complaint from a rank-and-file agent in this Sector about the Minutemen. Every report we've received indicates these people are very supportive of the rank-and-file agents, they're courteous, many of them are retired firefighters, cops, and other professionals, and they're not causing us any problems whatsoever. Reports of them causing "ground sensors" to go off are exaggerated because most of those are being set off by the ACLU sneaking around trying to find the Minutemen doing something wrong. The Minutemen have succeeded in shifting the bulk of the illegal alien traffic out of the Naco corridor. If only President Bush were so supportive of the rank-and-file agents... The Minutemen have made it very clear that they fully support rank-and-file Border Patrol agents. If only we had such support from the politicians we have to work for (aren't we really supposed to be working for the citizens of this country anyway?)

Saturday, April 16. There was a rally at the US Border Patrol Headquarters in Naco, Arizona, in support of a sizeable budget increase for USBP and Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). MMP border monitoring continues.

Thursday, April 14^th. We received a formal letter of congratulations and invitation from Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) this week to speak before the Immigration Reform Caucus in Washington, DC.

Saturday, April 9^th & 10^th. The phones have run non-stop all week long. Calls from the media have come in non-stop as have calls and email from volunteers. This weekend marked the end of our first full week in the field. Weekend volunteers lined up outside our office to sign up to do the job our President won't do - to protect our borders from invasion.

This weekend, CNN's Lou Dobbs, an ardent proponent of immigration reform, visited the MinuteMan Project. See our photo journal for pictures and audio segments of MMP orientation sessions. For an audio update of the status and success of the MinuteMan Project, listen to these excerpts from a Univision (Mexico) interview with Chris Simcox.

Here are some field notes from a MinuteMan Project volunteer.

A MinuteMan Project volunteer station was approached by a woman who handed out bags of home-baked cookies. She thanked us profusely, saying that this is the first time in years that the dogs are quiet and they could get a good night's sleep.

The following conversation was overheard in Spanish this weekend on 2-way radio near the Huachauca Mountains outside of Sierra Vista, AZ:
"We've got to get down, to get our loads down!" [Meaning drug loads]
Reply: "We can't, man - those f***ers are everywhere!".

Friday, April 8^th. Jim Gilchrist spoke with two Border Patrol agents today. They said they tremendously appreciate what we are doing to bring attention to our porous borders and they very much appreciate our help. They said that in the 23-mile area that MMP is observing, Border Patrol apprehensions have dropped from approximately 1,000 per day to less than 20 per day during this past week. The agents both insisted that their names not be mentioned because they would be fired if it was known that they were releasing this information to the MinuteMan Project. Jim has had similar very supportive conversations with about half a dozen other agents.

Thursday, April 7^th. Minuteman dismissed over sharing bowl of cereal with illegal alien. Cleared of wrongdoing, but violated procedures. See related news release.

Tuesday, April 5^th and Wednesday, April 6^th. Border monitoring continues. Border Patrol apprehensions drop significantly along the area monitored by MMP. 531 volunteers have now been placed along the border (cumulative total of all volunteers who have spent at least one 8-hour shift monitoring the border). Individual Border Patrol agents have expressed support of our efforts, and law enforcement has noted that not even a single traffic ticket has been issued.

ACLU observers set off Border Patrol ground movement sensors while watching MMP observers. MMP initially arranged monitoring positions with the US Border Patrol. It was confirmed that if MMP observers stayed within predetermined stationary areas, sensors would not be triggered. However, ACLU observers and some media have been walking up washes in order to observe MMP volunteers, and in doing so, have set off Border Patrol sensors.

Monday, April 4^th. Border monitoring officially began. Hundreds of volunteers are now monitoring the border. A number of illegal aliens already have been reported to the Border Patrol. A group of 18 were encountered and reported to the border patrol. Earlier this weekend, an illegal alien from Guatemala stumbled into the bible camp where the MMP is operating. He inadvertently wandered into the hornets' nest, but it turned out to be his lucky day. He was tired and dehydrated and MMP volunteers gave him medical attention, food and drink before the Border Patrol was able to arrive. 176 Border Patrol apprehensions have been made since MMP began monitoring the border.

Saturday, April 2^nd and 3^rd. Massive rallies were held at the Naco and Douglas Border Patrol stations, Arizona, in support of our Border Patrol agents. Hundreds and hundreds showed up at these rallies to support our hard working Border Patrol agents and to show extreme dissatisfaction with our government's open borders policy. Practically every state in the Union was represented by activists who traveled thousands of miles to participate in the rallies and MinuteMan Project. View photos of the rallies.

Friday, April 1, 2005. Volunteer orientation and a major news conference were held in Tombstone, Arizona. Introductory remarks were given by Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrest (MMP organizer), Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO, Chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus), Bay Buchanan (TeamAmerica PAC), Frosty Wooldridge (author), and Mark Edwards (KDWN-AM 720, Las Vegas, NV).

The hall was filled to capacity - several orientation sessions had to be held to accommodate all of the volunteers, which continued to arrive throughout the day. The news conference was attended by a large number of the media - over 200 media attended the press conference. You can view photos of the day's events, and listen to an mp3 audio recording of Congressman Tom Tancredo's hard-hitting and moving keynote speech.

"If the politicians can't read the polls, maybe they can read our lips: SECURE OUR BORDERS NOW!"
-- Congressman Tom Tancredo.