BISBEE — The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps says it is still raising funds to complete a fence project in Cochise County along the U.S.-Mexico border, but critics are voicing concerns about the organization and its efforts.

The Minuteman group built 10 1/2 miles of barbed wire fence on borderfront land on the Ladd family ranch in Cochise County starting in May 2006. It also began building nearly one mile of mesh fencing on the Hodges ranch in Cochise County in 2006.

However, work ceased there about 1 1/2 years ago and the fence still is not complete.

Al Garza, national executive director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said the fence project was intended to raise awareness of the need for the federal government to build a border fence.

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The organization is currently holding a fundraising campaign in which donors can pay $25 to place a flag and message on the border to support Minuteman border operations in Arizona, California and Texas. Some of the flags have been displayed during the early part of July on the Hodges fence.

“Post your flag even if you cannot stand a post at the border,” Carmen Mercer, vice president of MCDC, states in a solicitation for donations. “We need to replace old flags on 11 miles of Minuteman border fence that were damaged by weather or torn down by illegal aliens. We know that the presence of flags will deter illegal aliens because they will know that we are on duty watching.”

Garza said the money raised from the campaign will go toward finishing the Hodges fence, but he said he does not know when the work will re-start there. He also said it is possible that additional fencing will be built on the properties of other interested ranchers.

Stacey O’Connell, the former Arizona state director for MCDC and prior Phoenix chapter director, said he is not pleased that the Minuteman group continues to ask the public for more funding because it never followed through on its promise to build the Israeli-style fencing on the Ladd and Hodges properties.

Garza pointed out MCDC initially planned to build an Israeli-style barrier along the Ladd ranch, but the family decided instead on five-strand barbed wire fencing.

Jim Campbell, a man who mortgaged his house to donate $100,000 to the Minuteman fence project in 2006, filed a suit against the group for fraud and breach of contract in May 2007 in Maricopa County Superior Court. The defendants residing out of state claimed they never did business in Arizona and, Campbell allowed the civil case to be dismissed because he did not want to continue to fund the litigation.

Campbell is now seeking a criminal case in federal court. He is asking people to fill out a form and mail it to him if they donated money to the fence project and they feel they may have done so under false pretenses, misrepresentations and false promises and/or they feel there needs to be a full investigation into the finances surrounding it. He will direct the forms to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service regarding a mail fraud complaint.

O’Connell, who is one of the officers terminated from MCDC in the spring of 2007 for holding conference calls to determine a way to approach group president Chris Simcox regarding the fence and the finances, said he is continuing to search for answers to the organization’s financials.

Campbell obtained a Minuteman Foundation Inc. IRS Form 990-EZ for 2006 that discloses $87,500 in donations and cites service expenses of $86,054 under a program description of “build demonstration border fencing along southern border of the United States as a direct representation of the fence which should be constructed along the entire border by federal, state and local governmental authorities, in order to secure the border and promote national sovereignty. Inform the nation of the state of our unsecure international borders.”

O’Connell pointed out the $87,500 figure listed on the 990-EZ tax form does not make sense because Campbell alone donated $100,000 in 2006. He has asked MCDC officials to release tax records and explain the situation, but he said they have declined to do so.

“There is something wrong with that,” he said. “There is smoke there, and we believe that where there is smoke, there is fire.”

Campbell also points out in a Feb. 29 letter to an investigator that the $87,500 figure is far short of MCDC’s previously-announced $325,000 in donations as of May 26, 2006, or the $600,000 in donations as of August 2006.

“The government demands that these organizations provide tax documents based on truth and here it is clearly not truthful,” O’Connell said. “So if that money is going to other accounts, fine. It should be readily available to the public. If there was $1 million donated, wonderful. Just show people where it is at.”

Garza said he can’t answer questions regarding 2006 tax figures because he is not familiar with them. He added O’Connell has been “religiously” alleging that MCDC officials are scamming people, but the group ignores him because the claims are not factual.

“If in fact these allegations were accurate, someone would already be suffering the consequences,” he said. “But we are still standing firm. And we stand on our reputation. What we said we are going to do, we have done. We have erected the fence and we have gone as far as we can go with the funds that have come in.”

Rancher Richard Hodges credits the Minuteman fence project as the impetus to cause the government to build federal fence along his property. Before that time, he couldn’t get the attention of state representatives or law enforcement officials, other than Border Patrol, regarding the illegal immigration problem.

In October 2006, President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act, authorizing construction of hundreds of miles of fencing along the southern border. Federal fence is now in place along the Hodges and Ladd properties.

Hodges said he thinks the Minuteman effort actually saved his life. For a period of time, he was aggravating the drug runners on his property and some of them may have tried to kill him. But he thinks the fence project made him into too high profile of a person for that sort of action.

“I owe the Minutemen an awful lot, I really do,” he said. “They say they are going to finish the fence. People are still contributing money.”

John Ladd, one of the owners of his family’s ranch, said he is “grateful” for the barbed wire fence that the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps built along their property.

“I don’t know how many Mexican cows I have put back in Mexico, but in three years I put 523 back. When they got the Minuteman fence done, I didn’t put any back,” he said.

He said that once the Minuteman barbed wire fence was completed, the illegal immigrants did not cut it. But when the federal fence was built parallel to it last October, the Minuteman barbed wire fence started to take a “brutal beating.” Illegal immigrants who climb the federal fence regularly cut the barbed wire fence, presumably out of anger and frustration. But, Ladd said, he and others constantly repair that fence.

O’Connell said he thinks the government “absolutely” would have built the federal fence, even if the Minuteman group had not built the fences on the Ladd and Hodges properties.

“It was a noble cause for Minutemen to stand up and go to the border to protest the government. It was also a noble cause, I believe, to come up with an idea to build a fence,” he said. “But what makes Minutemen great and what makes Americans great is they do what they say they are going to do without any appearance of fraud.”

Campbell said he gives “some credence” to the argument that MCDC’s efforts caused the government to build the federal fence. But, he said, “The important thing is how does that excuse the fraudulent misrepresentation, concealment and refusal to disclose their donations and finances?”

“The government interceded and it made this whole fence project essentially moot or not necessary,” Campbell added. “Why didn’t they say ‘here is your refund back, folks. We didn’t spend it.’? But they don’t. They are pocketing that money.”

Garza said MCDC will continue with the fence project even though the U.S. government has already built numerous miles of fencing along the border with Mexico and plans to build many more miles this year.

“Wherever there is a place that we can drive a post, that is exactly what we are going to do. We are not going to let up,” he said, adding, “We are forcing our government to do what it is supposed to do to protect American citizens from illegal behavior.”

Ladd said he believes the Minuteman group had some influence on the actions of the government.

“They brought to the world’s attention what was going on,” he said.

The federal fence along the Hodges property is a formidable structure. Hodges said he has noticed a dramatic decrease in the number of illegal immigrants crossing his property since the government constructed the fence along his property. Once there were large groups of 20 to even 60 people, but today he only sees small groups of up to five people, who he suspects are drug runners.

“When you have people, you have trash. When you don’t have people, you don’t have trash,” he said.

But, Ladd said, the federal fence is not effective because it is not preventing people from illegally crossing the border on his property. The wall is stopping wildlife from migrating, though, he added.

“I’ve had more people coming by my house since the wall has been done than I had in 17 years that I’ve let the Border Patrol patrol the property that we own,” he said. “Wetbacks are just coming at will. Pregnant women, old women, old men, kids, whoever wants to climb the fence, climbs the fence. It’s a joke.”

HERALD/REVIEW reporter Jonathon Shacat can be reached at 515-4693 or by e-mail at jonathon.shacat@bisbeereview.net.

FOR MORE INFO

• People who donated money to the Minuteman border fence project and feel there should be an investigation into the project’s finances should visit: http://www.patriotscorner.com/forums/images/Jim_Campbell.pdf. For more information, visit http://www.patriotscorner.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=28&sid=c4665037f2819e13533a757ec031a346.

• People who want to make a donation to the Minuteman border fence project and have a flag placed on the nation’s borders should visit: https://secure.responseenterprises.com/mmflags/?a=1608. For more information, visit http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/.