Internal warfare splits volunteer border patrol

LOS ANGELES - The Minuteman Project, an anti-illegal-immigrant organization that has monitored the southern border, is embroiled in a nasty legal fight over accusations of financial improprieties that has splintered the group and will likely sideline it during the busiest time of the year for border crossing.

Former leaders of the Minuteman Project accuse founder Jim Gilchrist, 58, of using $300,000 of the group's money to support his pet causes, including promoting a book he coauthored and funding an unsuccessful run for Congress in a 2005 special election. Earlier this year, saying they were the group's board of directors, they took over the Minuteman Project Web site and bank accounts, and fired Gilchrist as president.

Gilchrist fired back with a lawsuit accusing his former associates of defamation. He maintains they have no standing to fire him from the California-based organization. He also accuses them of hacking into the Minuteman Project's Web site, stealing a donor database, and pilfering his personal stationery, all of which the organization relies on to raise funds.

"This crisis has put us in a tailspin," Gilchrist said in an interview. The organization had planned to mobilize members in coming weeks when Congress again takes up immigration legislation, Gilchrist said, but it has canceled its plans because he is busy dealing with legal issues.

The dispute centers on $750,000 in donations raised for the Minuteman Project by HSP Direct, a Herndon, Va., direct-mail firm hired by Gilchrist. After the company, which is now defunct, deducted expenses, the project received about $100,000.

Deborah Courtney, a Minuteman Project employee until recently, said the group should have received about $300,000 more. She charges that Gilchrist spent the money on his own fund-raising activities or secreted it in bank accounts that the group members could not access.

"This is an incredible injustice to the American patriots who donated money," Courtney said. "Some of those patriots are mesmerized by Jim's star quality."

Courtney also said Gilchrist improperly got the group a nonprofit postal rate on mailings when the organization should have paid full price. Courtney, Marvin Stewart - who has taken over as head of the Minuteman Project - and Barbara Coe, a former adviser to the group who heads the anti-illegal-immigrant California Coalition for Immigration Reform, reported the Minuteman Project to the Postal Service and to the IRS, Courtney said.

Gilchrist, a retired accountant, said his former colleagues did not understand basic business practices. He said the fund-raising money was spent appropriately on Minuteman Project expenses.

"I am not about to risk my retirement and my home and the reputation of the Minuteman Project to engage in some criminal enterprise," he said. Gilchrist calls his accusers "rogue people who had a false perception of millions if they could take over the organization."

This is not the first time the group has fractured. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has operated separately from the Minuteman Project since December 2005, after a bitter internal dispute over funding.

Both groups organize volunteers to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border and report suspected illegal immigrants to authorities. Both lobby legislators to close the border and enforce existing laws.

In South Texas, Michael Vickers, the head of a former Minuteman group, said his organization split from the national groups because Minuteman leaders did not adapt to the needs of volunteers who patrol on private land in Texas. Financial concerns also played a role, he said.

"People here in Texas were making big donations to the Minutemen, helping them raise funds, but they weren't getting answers as to how that money was being spent," Vickers said.

His group is now called Texas Border Volunteers, and it is gearing up for spring, typically the busiest time for illegal border-crossers traveling to agricultural jobs in the United States.