Charles Norwood: “this month the Minuteman Project has accomplished with just a few hundred citizen volunteers what the Federal Government…”

“this month the Minuteman Project has accomplished with just a few hundred citizen volunteers what the Federal Government has been unable to do and actually told us was impossible to do, and that is stopping illegal immigrants crossing our borders. In the process of focusing the Nation's attention on the insecurity of our borders, they have succeeded in bringing new information to the debate on the overall immigration crisis in this Nation. The new information is critical to this body's consideration of a specific policy area, probably and frankly the one area in which all Americans should be in 100 percent agreement, and that is protecting Americans from criminal illegal immigrants. U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Michael Nicely is head of the entire 260 mile long Tucson Sector of our border, the worst in the Nation for illegal immigration, and the same sector where the Minutemen shutdown a 23 mile portion of that sector. What should be horrifying to all Americans is what Chief Nicely told Government Executive Magazine just last week. He says that since November, the Border Patrol agents have caught 17,000 criminal illegal aliens trying to enter our country through just through this one 260 mile sector; 17,000 criminal illegal aliens. That is not total illegal aliens now, just the criminals. Overall, Chief Nicely's sector has arrested more than a quarter of a million people trying to enter this country illegally just since Thanksgiving.…”