Monday, December 23, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Run for the border

Private citizens perform service in rounding up illegal border crossers

A number of activist groups, including the Arizona Civil Liberties Union and the Border Action Network, are asking Arizona Gov.-elect Janet Napolitano to step in and stop private property owners along the Mexican border from engaging in "vigilantism."

At least three such property rights groups are now patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border, endeavoring to round up smugglers and other illegal alien invaders, whereupon they turn them over to local and federal police. The property owners targeted in this protest are not known to have committed any illegal violence.

This is apparently too much for Pamela K. Sutherland, legal director of the Arizona CLU, to bear.

"We are a government of law," Ms. Sutherland asserts. "The vigilantism and lawlessness they represent cannot be tolerated and we won't let their behavior go unchecked."

Jennifer Allen, co-director of the Tucson-based Border Action Network adds that the illegal aliens "have civil rights and human rights that take precedence over defending the country."

Let's stop and consider this assertion for a moment. Which is the more vital human right -- the one most deserving of defense? The right to work hard, save your earnings, and buy a piece of land, whereupon you then "own" that piece of real estate as your "private property" ... or the right to bypass proper legal procedures in order to enter someone else's country, then further to trespass on someone else's private property in the country you've entered illegally, camping there without his or her permission?

Here's a hint: The first principle -- private property rights -- was the one on which this nation was based, and which helped make it the most peaceful, free and wealth-generating society the world has ever known.

The solution is for the land owners to merely call the police or the INS, the activists say. But police and the INS admit that they're spread too thin, left to resemble small children trying to catch moths with teaspoons. And on the rare occasion when they do apprehend illegal border crossers, what is their recourse? To dump them back across the border and watch them try again tomorrow night, of course.

In fact, the property rights groups are performing a valuable public service -- and as long as they do not engage in any illegal activity while protecting their own lands, they should be encouraged to continue their patrols.