Minutemen to shift focus

Immigration reform group to monitor employers; opponents decry effort

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette Stephen Schreiman, director of the state chapter of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, in his Gaithersburg home.

‘‘It was not being productive to try to do anything during the winter months,” said Stephen Schreiman, the state chapter’s director. ‘‘We did some initial surveillance and realized that with 4 percent employment levels, what’s there to photograph?”

But with the summer weather sure to boost hiring activity at the sites, Maryland’s Minutemen are ratcheting up preparations for a concerted push against illegal immigrants.

In the next few weeks, Schreiman said, the group will host its first public event, an ‘‘open community forum,” most likely in Gaithersburg.

Meanwhile, the focus of their surveillance at the worker sites will be more on the businesses and homeowners, not the day laborers themselves.

He says he does not blame those among the day laborers who came into the country illegally. Rather, he focuses his ire particularly on Montgomery County government, and the politicians he says have ‘‘hijacked” the values of its citizenry.

‘‘You’ve got a group of people that are ideologues. Many of them have been in politics for so long that they’ve lost touch with reality. What we have are just politicians that have run amok,” he said.

And through the summer, as this year’s elections near, Schreiman says the Minutemen will add a political dimension to their strategy.

But while Schreiman deems ‘‘delusional” those who believe that the majority of the county supports illegal immigrants, County Councilman Tom Perez finds the claims of the Minutemen and their ilk ‘‘laughable.”

‘‘We’ve had day laborer centers in Montgomery County for 15 years and it’s been a win-win-win: a win for the adjacent communities, a win for businesses and a win for the laborers themselves,” he said. ‘‘I get a real kick out of people... telling us what this community thinks.”

The county last year allocated $125,000 for a day laborer center in Gaithersburg and has set the money aside again this year.

Mayor Sidney A. Katz and the City Council have discussed the center publicly three times since a task force of residents made its recommendations on what course the city should follow. Progress has so far been slowed by the difficulty of finding a site that conforms to what the task force recommended.

Perez, who is running for state attorney general, is nonetheless optimistic that a Gaithersburg center will be up and running by July.

Schreiman insists that the Minutemen do not oppose a day laborer center in Gaithersburg outright, only if it serves illegal immigrants.

And while the Minutemen are vowing a stronger public presence in the coming months, they are a group that remains shrouded in secrecy.

Schreiman, a biomedical engineer for a ‘‘national company” somewhere ‘‘in the metropolitan area,” spoke at two of the city council meetings since the task force wrapped up their work, but did not identify himself as the chapter’s director.

A membership that started out at around 20 has now swelled to what he insists are more than 100, he said, more than half from Montgomery County. He would not, however, show The Gazette a list of members.

No other members of the state chapter have come forward, in part because of threats, Schreiman said, but also because many of the members have not been allowed by their employers to come out as Minutemen.

‘‘We’ve got people in local government,” he said. ‘‘Obviously, they keep a low profile.”

Nonetheless, the mood in Montgomery County is drastically more accepting of opposition to illegal immigrants than in years — even months — past, says Chuck Floyd of Kensington, a Republican running for county executive.

‘‘I talk to people every day, I talk to thousands of people, and they’re very upset about it,” he said. ‘‘Is that the No. 1 issue in Montgomery County? No, it’s probably number five. But it’s on the radar screen.”

Perez counters Floyd’s ‘‘message of division and pessimism.”

‘‘There’s a regrettably long history of xenophobes who oppose immigration,” he said. ‘‘The good news is that they have always remained a small fringe group, and they will continue to be.”

The state chapter is one of 23 branches of the national organization, with five more soon to come, said Connie Hair, spokeswoman for the Minutemen’s national headquarters in Phoenix.

More than 7,000 volunteers have had background checks, received training, and have been cleared by the national headquarters to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, she said.

But as an organization, the Minutemen are still going through ‘‘growing pains,” having incorporated itself as a 501(c)4 nonprofit only in April 2005.

Which is why, said Hair, there have yet to be financial records showing how much money the group has raised. Nor did she reveal details of its budget.

‘‘We will release those just like everybody else does,” she said. ‘‘I don’t even have those numbers to give out yet.”

Meanwhile, Casa of Maryland, which runs the county’s two existing day laborer centers, holds that if anything, the presence of the Minutemen ‘‘has attracted a lot of sympathy and new employers coming in to support the workers,” said Kim Propeack, Casa’s director of community outreach.

And if the Minutemen do in fact up their presence at the worker sites, Casa remains at the ready, she said.

‘‘We have a very strong core of volunteers ready to fly into action if the Minutemen ever get aggressive. But luckily, they’ve been largely irrelevant.”