Minutemen's Anti-Immigrant Fence Made of Chicken Wire

For years now, the Minuteman Defense Corps has patrolled the border between the U.S. and Mexico, ready to stop illegal immigrants. President and founder Chris Simcox talked of plans to build a fourteen-foot-high fence, covered in cameras and razor wire, and flanked by ditches - at the small cost of $55 million. Inspired members of the corps donated huge sums of money, some selling valuable belongings and even mortgaging their homes. The fence was in construction for two years, and it was just unveiled.

Bob Wright, a former Minuteman, said it best. "It wasn't until they actually started the ceremony that it became clear. It was gonna be a cow fence!"

The fence is woefully inadequate, everyone agrees, and it contains none of the flashy technology that was promised. The company Simcox contracted to provide security cameras says they have not heard from him in eighteen months, and no order was placed. So where did all the money go?

So far, the answer to this question is unclear. Several members, Wright included, questioned Simcox and were immediately fired. Though Simcox has volunteered his tax filings on his website, the largest expenditure listed is "professional services," with no explanation given.

Simcox has now admitted that the fence was to be merely a symbol, something to goad the government into building a real barrier. He's changed his tune, but the former members he fired for questioning his plan are unimpressed.

Wright says, "to this day, we still don't know how much the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has raised. We don't have a clue, not a clue."

Over a year ago, President Bush signed a bill to construct 700 miles of federally funded fence along the Mexican border. A privately built fence, Arizona officials say, would be impossible to build - the border spans both public and private land.