How Immigration is Rousing the Zealots

(2 of 2)

One leader who has morphed from militiaman to Minuteman is Mike Vanderboegh, 53, of Pinson, Ala. Once the "commander" of what he called the First Alabama Cavalry Regiment Constitutional Militia, which published antiterrorism screeds, Vanderboegh is the past Alabama state director of the Minutemen. He has advocated hurling bricks through the windows of Congress members who support giving illegal immigrants the same rights as U.S. citizens. Those bricks, he says, should be used to build a wall sealing the U.S. off from Mexico. He argues that the open borders facilitate drug trafficking and the sexual exploitation of immigrant women.

Vanderboegh says he is not a racist, and he has taken pains to distance himself from neo-Nazis. He acknowledges that anti-immigrant sentiment is giving the Klan "fertile ground for recruiting," whereas a few years ago "they could have held a convention in a phone booth." "Illegal immigration and the destruction of the rule of law is social napalm, and people are running around with matches," he warns. "One day it will go off."