The Hunted

Ironically, it was widely reported that Chris Simcox, Minuteman CDC president, was himself convicted in 2004 of carrying a gun inside a National Park Service monument, a misdemeanor. He was sentenced to two years' probation and has since sought to distance himself from the more militant groups. Simcox co-founded the original Minuteman Project with Jim Gilchrist in 2005 and later started the Minuteman CDC as an offshoot organization. Kirby sought to distinguish the two groups, saying that unlike the Minuteman Project, the Minuteman CDC discourages members from taking rifles and shotguns to the border, allowing only concealed weapons with required permits. "We don't want the image of a bunch of gun-toting rednecks," he says.

As Jimenez flipped the meat amid billowing smoke, he talked of his hopes for the meeting with Garland Mayor Bob Day that afternoon. "I hope we get a positive response, that he takes us into account," he said. "We don't want what happened in Farmers Branch to happen here." He was referring to a series of controversial anti-immigrant measures the town passed last month.

Jimenez and the other union members also planned to meet with representatives of the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborers Organizing Network, which has helped workers across the country set up centers providing legal, educational and health services, as well as set minimum hourly rates for skills such as painting, carpentry and drywall installation. The coalition made national headlines in August when it announced a partnership with the AFL-CIO, a major turnaround for big labor since it has long viewed immigrants as competitors. Facing dwindling membership, the AFL-CIO explained its embrace of immigrants by stressing that when standards are lowered for some workers, they're lowered for all of them.

In a way, Jimenez says, the Minutemen have spurred the workers to do something they should be doing anyway. In addition to organizing laborers across the region to set minimum wages, he wants to establish a center of their own where they can provide community services. He also wants to find shelter for some of the American-born homeless men who come to the center for work.

There's usually a handful of American Anglos and African-Americans at the Garland center, and many of them believe the immigrants get preferential treatment for jobs. "They give out tickets, call numbers, but it doesn't mean shit," a white man in a flannel shirt said, complaining that contractors often bypass him for Latino laborers. "It don't matter if you have a number 5 or a number 55, they're biased."

Of the dozen or so American-born day laborers I talked to, most were convicted felons. Given their criminal records, they have a hard time finding steady jobs, and most declined to give their names. A black 20-something man waiting for a warehouse job at the RaceTrac in Arlington told me he'd recently been released from state prison in California. When a black couple driving a van pulled into the gas station and several of the Mexican workers ran up to the car, he frowned. "Look, here's black folks, they should be looking out for their own, but they take them because they can pay them less," he said. The couple appeared to be taking whoever got there first, but the man shook his head. "I'm not going to be runnin' up to no car," he said sullenly.

To Johnika Edwards, an Anglo plumber from Alabama who helped Jimenez work the grill during the barbecue, such talk is almost as ludicrous as the Minutemen. "I don't see them no different from the KKK," she said. "They discriminate against illegal immigrants, and I don't think it's right. I hate to hate against my own kind, but I don't see them out here, do you? There are three of us [Anglo workers]."

"I feel sorry for those guys over there," he said. "I wish they had jobs—can you imagine standing there in the cold, waiting for someone to give you a job digging ditches with Christmas coming?"

He insists his goal is to target contractors, not workers, even though the obvious result of deterring hiring at labor centers means less work for the guys waiting at the curb. "Take job opportunities away, and they'll go home," he said, arguing that in some small way, his efforts could perhaps prevent people from leaving their native country in the first place. After all, he's been to the border, he's seen the looks of fear and exhaustion, the desperation of immigrants who've trekked for days through the desert with little food or water.

"I know a rancher who found two bodies on his property," he said, gazing straight into the sun toward the few workers still gathered on the curb. "One was a female skeleton. That family never knew what happened to her. Her ankle was broken. She was probably left behind by the group because she couldn't keep up." Returning to the subject at hand, he added, "If there were no reason to come here, there would be no reason for coyotes to take advantage of these poor people."

Kirby glanced at his watch. It was past 9:30 a.m., time to go.

"We've made a call—15 minutes to all units to report," he said. "We're gonna wrap it up. We've done all we can do."