Suit claims ranchers acting as border agents
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 11, 2003 12:00 AM
Armed ranchers in southern Arizona are impersonating Border Patrol agents to apprehend undocumented immigrants, trespassing on private property and creating a climate of fear and intimidation along the border with Mexico, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by a human rights group.
The lawsuit, filed by the Tucson-based Border Action Network, comes at a time when armed civilian groups continue to patrol the border to apprehend undocumented immigrants.
The lawsuit filed against Cochise County rancher Roger Barnett, his wife, Barbara, and a relative, Ralph Barnett, demands that the federal government stop them from apprehending undocumented immigrants. The Barnetts have claimed publicly in the past that they have apprehended thousands of migrants and turned them over to Border Patrol agents.
"The Barnetts represent in a sense the most protected of the groups. They've been around the longest, they're from Arizona, and they've been promoting these activities for a long time," Dan Krehbiel, a Border Action Network community organizer said Wednesday at a news conference at the state Capitol.
Krehbiel said the group filed the lawsuit after lobbying Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard to investigate and prosecute the groups for more than a year to no avail. Krehbiel was joined at the news conference by three Arizona lawmakers, state Reps. Ben Miranda, a Phoenix Democrat, and Tucson Democrats Tom Prezelski and Ted Downing.
"Vigilante violence has no place in civilized society. Patriotic Americans use the ballot box, not the powder box, to vent frustrations," Downing said.
The Barnetts did not return a phone message. Goddard could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton said the suit would be reviewed and he would "take appropriate action."
The lawsuit won't stop armed civilian groups from apprehending undocumented immigrants, said Chris Simcox, director of the Tombstone-based Civil Homeland Defense, a civilian patrol group, and publisher of the Tombstone Tumbleweed weekly newspaper.
By apprehending undocumented immigrants, armed groups like his are exercising their right to protect private property from the "hordes" of migrants who cross the border illegally and are making a "political statement" that the federal government has failed to enforce immigration laws, Simcox said.
"It's up to the government to solve this," Simcox said. "If they don't do this we're going to force them to do it by doing it ourselves."
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson in conjunction with International Human Rights Day, accuses the Barnetts of apprehending a group of 30 undocumented immigrants Oct. 11 on a ranch in Cochise County owned by Donald Mackenzie.
Mackenzie claims in the lawsuit that he encountered the Barnetts at one of the wells on his ranch and that he mistook Roger Barnett for a Border Patrol agent because he was wearing a cap with a U.S. Border Patrol emblem and hunting clothes "indistinguishable" from clothes worn by Border Patrol agents.