Human rights groups in Arizona, immigrant workers and families as well as groups throughout the country are holding meetings to decide whether to boycott Arizona, said Alexis Mazon, a volunteer in Tucson for Defeat 200, an effort that campaigned against Proposition 200. The decision will depend on what the Legislature does, she said.

On the other front, Simcox said he and Gilchrist would step up their efforts to lobby the U.S. Congress when they travel to Washington for an April 27 meeting with members of the congressional Immigration Reform Caucus.

Simcox said they will tell the caucus members that the Minuteman patrols will continue indefinitely until Congress commits to funding the deployment of the National Guard or military along the border.

"This is a no-compromise situation. We will not discontinue patrolling the border until the Congress funds and clears the way for the National Guard, and/or specially trained military troops, to follow our model that we've created," Simcox said. "We have the people of the United States behind us in overwhelming numbers."

Simcox said the first two weeks of the monthlong Arizona Minuteman Project have been a resounding success, exceeding expectations, choking off illegal entries along the 23-mile stretch of border in Cochise County where project volunteers have focused their efforts since April 1.

He said the project has attracted worldwide attention and sent a strong message to Congress that Americans have the will to force the government to do its job of protecting the nation's borders.

It has also brought a flood of more than 10,000 new volunteers that will allow the project to expand farther and faster than planned, Simcox said.

There was no way to independently verify his claim.

"We've proven that the border can be secured by using a different model than the Border Patrol has been using in the past," said Simcox.

But Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said the Minuteman Project has been more of a detriment than a help on the border. Valuable resources were diverted, he said, as agents responded to more than 150 sensor activations caused by Minuteman volunteers "wandering around the desert in search of undocumented aliens."

He said while apprehensions in the Naco and Douglas areas are down since March 31, the reason is most likely the result of increased patrolling by the Mexican military south of the border. Sectorwide, he said apprehensions are up slightly over last year at this time.

Adame said the prospect of dealing with the Minuteman presence on an ongoing basis would have a negative effect on Border Patrol operations. It is also a potentially dangerous situation, he said, for the armed and untrained civilian volunteers who put themselves in an environment that includes armed drug smugglers and ruthless people-traffickers.

"We still believe this is a very dangerous way to make a political statement," Adame said.