Minutemen ignore the Constitution

I read with interest the letter written by Eileen Garcia (Mailbag, Feb. 24) where she tells us Barbara Diamond, a Coastline Pilot reporter, is somehow “obsessed with the Minutemen” because she covered the story of the Orange County Superior Court’s denial of the Minuteman Project’s application to be in our Patriots Day parade.

The Minuteman Project is a vigilante organization that practices racial profiling, interferes with people’s right to travel and right to be free of illegal seizure guaranteed to everyone by our United States Constitution and State Constitution.

Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons ? against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.”

Our California Constitution has a parallel provision which states in Section 19: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons ? against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.”

Our federal and state Constitutions specifically state its provisions are applicable to “all persons.”

It does not state that our Constitution applies only to citizens. So, regardless of legal status, when the Minutemen detain or stop any person at the border or within our borders, they are violating the constitutional rights of that individual.

The Minutemen is a vigilante organization that practices racial profiling since they target Latinos and anyone with dark skin. They are racist and camouflage themselves in the American flag in the same manner Hitler promoted German nationalism as he killed six million Jews to cleanse the “fatherland” of the dark-skinned foreigners and Jews.

Their practices are illegal but they still yell out: “What part of illegal do you not understand?” when they refer to immigrants. The problem is they obviously don’t understand the word “illegal” as it applies to their own activities whenever they detain or stop anyone for any reason.

They do not have the authority to detain individuals and, in every instance they do, are violating that person’s civil rights and committing the crimes of false imprisonment and kidnapping. It will probably take a jail cell and a federal lawsuit before they will understand what they do is criminal and illegal under our laws.

Jim Gilchrist, the Minuteman Project founder, is a man with political aspirations who did not get the message when he lost in his recent bid for Congress. The message is the voters do not want Gilchrist to be their representative because he represents everything they oppose. He is hardly a patriot since his vision of America is exclusive as opposed to inclusive.

If our forefathers had made our Constitutional laws only applicable to American citizens, at least half of the people living in the United States at the time would not have been protected.

Our forefathers and foremothers were immigrants who came, as so many came after them, to establish a new nation where they could live in peace and work toward prosperity. Today, America stands for these same principles our forefathers fought and died for to save this great nation.

Gilchrist and the Minutemen would like to take us back to the pogroms of Europe that were used to find people and get rid of those people he considers undesirable. That is not his call, nor should it be what we stand for.

In that same vein, Superior Court Judge Michael Brenner ruled our Patriots Day Parade Assn. had the right to exclude Gilchrist and his Minutemen from our parade because the message of the Minutemen and their political agenda seeks to divide our community rather than unite it.

What part of, “We don’t want you, Jim Gilchrist and the Minutemen” do you not understand?