"They've shown how easy it is to shut this border down," he said. "We just need eyes on the border."

Robyn Giacoletti said she and her husband were apprehensive about the Minuteman Project at first, but after meeting the minutemen found most of them to be "grandfatherly.

"It does worry me a little bit, I don't want to see violence on either side," she said. "They get to go home. We don't."

Dawn Walker said since the Minuteman Project started last week, she's had very little traffic across her five-acre Bisbee ranch, where she lives with her husband and daughters. Walker, who supports the minutemen, is also not joining them. There are rumors at school about possible gang retaliation against the minutemen, she said. "Besides, we do patrol the area on our own year-round."

Walker has taken her 15-year-old daughter, Shayne Garner, to meet the minutemen who are watching the border a few miles from her home.

"It's all hype," she said of stories she's heard about vigilantes and racists. "They're people, just like us."

Walker said she's always carried a gun, in case she runs into a rattlesnake in the desert. Now, she carries one for self-defense.

"It's gotten to the point, it's so invasive on my life. As soon as I drop my guard they're right there," she said. "It's scary — you don't know who they are."

While many immigrants simply ask for water, some have demanded food and money. She has to constantly repair her fence, and doesn't go to work during the day anymore, for fear her house will be broken into. Walker said she occasionally finds illegal drugs among the litter left by the illegal immigrants.

However, Walker isn't about to leave the home where she lives, which was built by her grandmother. Even if she wanted to leave, she said, she'd have to practically give her home away. "Nobody wants to live in a war zone."

A Naco bar owner, however, said the minutemen seem to be simply "people who want to get attention. They're not accomplishing anything."

Leonel Urcadez, a lifelong Naco resident, said business at his bar, Gay 90s, is often interrupted by Border Patrol agents chasing illegal immigrants inside.

The bar is across the street from a border checkpoint, and Giacoletti says he sees illegal immigrants climb over the wall nearly every night, sometimes just 25 feet from the checkpoint.

Urcadez feels the claim that the minutemen are worried about criminals and terrorists is dishonest.

"It's not terrorists," he said. "It's all about President Fox, drugs and illegals. They're prejudiced . . . Most people here in Naco are not violent."

Janet Warner, who's lived in Naco for seven years, said it's easy to spot illegal immigrants who come into Gay 90s, where she bartends: "They're shy, quiet and scared to death."

"I don't think they'll last a month," Warner said of the minutemen. "It seems like a lot of people have way too much spare time on their hands. These aren't terrorists crossing, they're migrant field workers."

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com