Defenders of Property Rights Convening at Arizona-Mexico Border
by Chad Groening
November 4, 2003
(AgapePress) - A volunteer organization dedicated to protecting the private property rights of American citizens says there is a full-scale war waging on the nation's southern border. One Arizona rancher says he has had Mexican soldiers on his property.Ranch Rescue is calling it "Operation Thunderbird." Beginning on November 15, the property rights group will dispatch volunteers to an Arizona ranch to help a landowner who has been plagued by individuals crossing over illegally from Mexico onto his property.
"He has property directly adjacent to the international border," explains Ranch Rescue spokesman Jack Foote, "and he has been having to deal with drug smugglers [and] people smugglers."
According to Foote, the landowner also has seen several incursions of Mexican soldiers on his property in recent months. "He has encountered armed, uniformed Mexico soldiers on his property three times in the last two months," Foote says. "They were very heavily armed."
He adds that shots have been fired from Mexico at people on the property. "There is a full-scale war about to break out on our southern border, particularly on this one property where we're sending our volunteers," Foote says.
The Ranch Rescue spokesman says his group intends to document the incursions and apprehend those involved. Operation Thunderbird is slated to continue into April 2004. In addition to videotaping the incursions, volunteers will be asked to build what the group calls "physical obstacles" to ongoing vandalism, and to counter physical threats to the landowner's family.
