'Minuteman' expands watch

The Minuteman Project will expand its border watch efforts from Arizona to include California, New Mexico, Texas, Michigan and Idaho, said organizers Chris Simcox and James Gilchrist said this week.

Gilchrist will also begin organizing the group's efforts to take the Minuteman Project to the nation's interior, going after the businesses that employ illegal border crossers and stepping up efforts to lobby Congress to put the National Guard or the U.S. military on the border.

Meanwhile, immigrants' rights advocates are threatening a boycott of Arizona businesses because of what they call "hate groups on the border and in the state Capitol."

The first target of the boycott would be the Arizona Cardinals football team, which is slated to play a National Football League game in Mexico in October, said Salvador Reza of Tonatierra, a human rights group in Phoenix.

"Take somebody else," Reza said they will tell the NFL. "Take the Dallas Cowboys. Take the Washington Redskins."

Members of Tonatierra and about 10 other groups from Arizona, California and Mexico are protesting Arizona state lawmakers' support of the volunteer border patrol and bills that would restrict immigrants' access to services.

Arizona state Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, laughed when he heard about the threat to the Cardinals.

"The truth is, it's all a game," Pearce said. "These are people who are pro-illegal. You have to secure our borders. They would ignore all the damage to America. The shame is on them."

Pearce, House appropriations chairman, was involved in the drafting of Proposition 200, approved by Arizona voters in November to restrict illegal immigrants' access to state-funded public services.

Simcox said he was unaware of the protest or threatened boycott, but said the protesters have a First Amendment right to state their position.

Reza said the proposed boycott potentially involves thousands of people in cities nationwide, because the issues at stake affect Latinos and other immigrants.

Cathy Rion, 28, a member of Heads Up Collective in San Francisco, was among a group that traveled to the Arizona Capitol by car and plane from California to promote the protest. Travel expenses were paid by donations to the California coalition Deporten a la Migra, which translates as "Deport Immigration and Customs Enforcement." The group was formed to fight immigration raids in San Francisco, Rion said.