Border watcher ordered to pay nearly $100,000 for threatening huntersLawsuit resolution is a victory for immigrant rights groups trying to curb armed monitoring groups.
By Randal C. Archibold
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Friday, November 24, 2006
For years, Roger Barnett has holstered a pistol to his hip, tucked an assault rifle in his truck and set out over the scrub brush on his thousands of acres of ranchland near the border in southeastern Arizona to hunt.
Hunt illegal immigrants, that is, an act that's often chronicled by the news media. But now, after boasting of having captured 12,000 illegal crossers on land he owns or leases from the state and emerging as one of the earliest and most prominent of the self-appointed border watchers, Barnett finds himself the prey.
Immigrant rights groups have filed lawsuits accusing him of harassing and unlawfully imprisoning people he has confronted on his ranch. One suit pending in federal court accuses him, his wife and his brother of pointing guns at 16 illegal immigrants they intercepted, threatening them with dogs and kicking one woman in the group. Another suit, which accused Barnett of threatening
two Mexican American hunters and three young children with an assault rifle and insulting them with racial epithets, ended Wednesday with a jury awarding the hunters $98,750 in damages.
But Barnett, known for dressing in military garb and caps with insignia resembling the U.S. Border Patrol's, is a special prize to the immigrant rights groups. He is ubiquitous on Web sites, mailings and brochures put out by border monitoring groups and, with family members, was an inspiration for efforts like the Minutemen civilian border patrols. "The Barnetts, probably more than any people in this country, are responsible for the vigilante movement as it now exists," said Mark Potok, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the groups. "They were the recipients of so much press coverage, and they kept boasting, and it was out of those boasts that the modern vigilante movement sprang up."
Jesus Romo Vejar, the lawyer for the hunting party, said their court victory Wednesday would serve notice that mistreating illegal immigrants would not pass unpunished. Although the hunters were not illegal immigrants, they contended that Barnett's treatment of them reflected his attitude and practices toward Latinos crossing his land, no matter what their legal status.
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