Camp Vigilance - the home of the Minutemen Corps of California and Border Patrol Auxiliary

It was 1995.

The American people had just witnessed the single largest act of domestic terrorism in the nation’s history.

Timothy McVeigh was ultimately put to death for his role in the bombing of the Federal Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Over 848 people were killed or injured, mainly from the collapse of the building.

A second man, Terry Nichols, was convicted for assisting McVeigh and serves life in prison.

Both men had ties to militia movements that sought to recruit members with strong anti-federal government and strict constitutional beliefs. Although they generally shared common ideology, they were not universal in structure and operated independently at the local levels.

During the 1990’s, the influence of these groups peaked and declined due to a number of contributing factors, according to federal and private watchdog groups: the siege on the Weaver family & the Branch Davidian compound, passage of the Brady Gun law, increased scrutiny and prosecution by the federal government, and acts of violence by fringe members which served to pollute their message.

Fifteen years later, scrutiny has returned to the militia & patriot movement, and so-called “right-wing extremists.”

Two reports in the past five months paint a compelling narrative about the potential threat from such groups.

In April 2009, a leaked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence assessment, deemed “For Official Use Only,” warned about existing economic and political conditions that may be fueling “right-wing” extremist recruitment.

“The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment,” DHS indicated in a key finding.

A similar 24-page report released August 2009 by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) entitled, “The Second Wave: Return of the Militia,” is sweeping in its indictment. A number of citizens (such as former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack), patriot groups and organizations are targeted in a “connect-the-dots” intelligence report that climaxes with seventy-five documented cases of domestic right-wing “plots, conspiracies, and racist rampages” from 1995-2009.

A spokesman for the private group SPLC, described on its website as being known for “its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups,” recently discussed the report on national media circuits. (SPLC did not respond to a Big 3 News interview request for this article).

“Essentially what we’re seeing is that the militias, as they existed in the ’90′s, are really re-appearing,” Mark Potok, Director of Intelligence at SPLC, recently told MSNBC. “That means people in ‘camo’ outfits, doing para-military training in the woods, and so on. It also means a kind of coming-back-to-life of many of the conspiracy theories that animated the militias.”

Among the factors contributing to a right-wing extremism resurgence, according to SPLC, are those who promote racism and vigilante actions to deal with the problem of illegal immigration.

The SPLC report, in a section entitled “Nativists to ‘Patriots’”, devotes considerable space to the Minutemen movement and their California home, Camp Vigilance. Located on an active smuggling trail less than three miles from the U.S.-Mexico border in the high desert of East San Diego County, the campground features an 1856 renovated stage-coach depot.

Big 3 News spoke exclusively with Carl Braun, a co-founder and active member of the Minutemen and a private, non-profit group named Border Auxiliary Patrol in California, about the objectives of the group and his views on the SPLC intellligence report.

“The Minutemen Civil Defense Corp of California was started in August 2005,” Braun said. “The Minutemen Project in Arizona was basically an event, it wasn’t actually an organization. It was an event that was held in April 2005, and out of that spawned different chapters in different states.”

Braun, an Immigration Policy writer for The Examiner and author of the book “Above All Else”, said the group meets regularly for what they call “musters” in order to coordinate activities that help facilitate their mission.

“The whole idea behind these were to be a political protest, to draw attention to the fact that the borders were unsecure. So unsecure, in fact, that ordinary, everyday citizens had to come down and stand on posts and watch over the border,” Braun said. “We never intended for us to actually shoot anyone. It was just for us to go out, to demonstrate to the American public that this was a real issue.”

In 2005, border patrol apprehensions peaked out at nearly 1.2 million, according to statistics released by Homeland Security. In 2008, that number dropped to the lowest levels since 1976 — roughly 724,000. Despite the sharp decline, the SPLC report notes, “the number of Minutemen border operations, paramilitary training exercises and rallies continue to increase, and new Minutemen groups continue to form.”

Braun believes Minutemen efforts, in part, continue to play a positive role in the decline of apprehensions.

“One of the reasons for the drop — the Federal Government, DHS, didn’t decide to more than double the size of border control because they just one day decided that was something they should do — it came as a result of us, and our political protest,” Braun said.

“They started doing it in 2006, but there were 8,100 border patrol agents watching the United States. That’s now 22,000, and that didn’t happen by accident. The numbers are down because us, the National Guard, and the Border Patrol are being more vigilant along the border and making it more difficult for them to come in.”

A group of illegals walk by Camp Vigilance one morning during a meeting...

Braun was asked about specific characterizations of Camp Vigilance in the SPLC report, such as the existence of a public address system used to blare “a call to arms from ResistNet” throughout the campground.

“We don’t have a public address system at Camp Vigilance,” Braun responded. “None of us even knows what a ResistNet radio is, if that’s a program or an interview show, or whatever it might be, we don’t know what it is.”

Pressed again about a similar claim later on in the SPLC report that the campground has a PA system plugged into a massive RV amplifying ResistNet, Braun denied the charge.

“We’ve never had one,” he said. “If we had one, when we have a meeting or something, we wouldn’t have to bang on a bell to get everybody’s attention to come in for a meeting. We’d call it over this public address system that we don’t have.”

Braun acknowledged there are splinter groups, such as Campo Minutemen noted in the SPLC report, that do not assimilate well with the mainstream Minutemen.

“He (SPLC ‘Nativist’ writer) was fairly accurate in depicting what they are, what they do, and some of the things they say,” Braun said. “Many of the Campo Minutemen are guys that didn’t fit in with us, so they go off and do their own thing.”

Braun said the Minutemen have strict rules when it comes to their members, and everyone is vetted and goes through felony background checks. The average citizen — veterans, parents, seniors — volunteer for about three days at a time, and some for weeks at a time.

“If people come down with the expectation that they’re gonna be able to carry their AR-15 and put on their night vision goggles and face paint, and crawl around in the weeds, that’s not who we are. We tell people, if this is your idea of watching over the border and helping the Border Patrol, you’ve got the wrong group.”

Braun says the group’s activities are always coordinated with federal officials and law enforcement, and there hasn’t been a single instance of violence. The group has logged over three-quarters-of-a-million man hours in the field with no reported injuries or incidents.

“Our record, according to the Border Patrol, has no blemishes, is spotless and exemplary when it comes to working with law enforcement,” Braun stated. Law enforcement is on the property regularly and maintains constant contact with the members of the Camp.

“Law enforcement comes in, we give them coffee, bagels or muffins or whatever else they want. They know exactly what we do, because we tell them everything. We gave them our radio frequencies; we gave them a radio so they could listen in on us,” Braun explained.

A group of fence builders on a Sunday morning. The area has been shut down to illegal traffic

Asked for a significant example of how the Minutemen group has made an impact with border control efforts, Braun pointed to the construction of  border fencing by the government.

“Three hundred miles of kick-butt fence,” Braun said. “The government says they’ve put six hundred miles of fencing out there. But the reality of it is that half of it is just vehicle barrier, and you can raise one leg and get over it.”

Braun said in the Minutemen area, there’s an 18-ft fence that is “darn near impenetrable.”

“If you had a tank you’d have a tough time getting through this fence. It goes five-to-eight feet underground, each post is filled with concrete, and they’re four-by-four steel posts that are hollow, set about three inches away from each other and connected at the top. This fence would not exist if it were not for our efforts. That’s our fence, and we’re responsible for it.”

As for the future of the Minutemen, Braun is a realist.

“The Minutemen movement is fragmented at this point. The national organization has advised all the chapters to go off and form their own 501(c)(3)’s and start fundraising on their own. It’s a signal for us that the national focus on this is going away, and we have to rely on ourselves locally, which we’ve done since 2006.”

Braun does not expect the Minutemen organization to grow — presently there are about forty to sixty people who show up at the monthly musters. He does, however, anticipate some growth in the Border Patrol Auxiliary.

“We’re building that very slowly as an Association, kind of like the NRA that also has field deployments. Five years from now the border will not be secure, there will still be a need for people like us, and there will still be people like us doing what we do.”

And, there will still be agencies and private watch dog groups monitoring and analyzing the Minutemen and similar group’s activities, which Braun dismisses groups like SPLC.

“This report — and I should say this David Holthouse (SPLC ‘Nativist’ writer) should really be into fiction writing — everything he wrote about us in that report was fiction and was fabricated,” Braun stated. “These guys are worthless slugs. They’re not American, in my mind; they have no concept of what it is to be American.”

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