Original Article Volunteers get cold reception in Vermont They run into protest and walk through wild to watch Canada border By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff | October 16, 2005 NEWPORT, Vt. -- It's hard to save the United States from illegal immigrants when you can't find the border. At noon yesterday, some volunteers in the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps were in this bucolic town in northern Vermont, trying to do both. Eleven members of this citizens group had come to the Vermont-Canada border to patrol for illegal immigrants. They had intended to station themselves in Derby Line, a quaint village that straddles the border. But these Minutemen were forced out of town by a larger crowd of protesters, who denounced their opposition to illegal immigration as a front for racism. So the volunteers set off to watch a stretch of border on a bike path that runs along Lake Memphremagog. Only they got lost. Some of the men stood at a break in the path, which is crossed by the Canadian border close to where they stood. But the group's leader, Bob Casimiro of Weymouth, Mass., was not sure which way to send them. He pointed down the path toward a footbridge. The Minutemen started walking. ''Stay within sight," he told them. Within minutes, they were out of sight. The Minutemen were formed in Arizona by ordinary citizens who believe that the federal government is not doing enough to secure the country's borders. In April, they stationed themselves along the southwest border with Mexico, armed with binoculars and cellphones. They alerted border patrol officers whenever they saw people crossing illegally into the United States, hoping to deter others from trying. Last month, they announced they would start patrolling the border with Canada. Border patrol officers are careful not to criticize the Minutemen directly. But they do point out that the officers are best qualified to watch the border. Others were more openly critical this week. Yesterday, about 40 men and women stood in the pouring rain on the village common in Derby Line to protest the arrival of the Minutemen in town. ''They are outsiders, and we don't want them here," said David Van Deusen of Moretown, Vt., who helped to organize the protest. ''We don't want their racist policies in Vermont." The Minutemen's efforts are as much about public relations as apprehending illegal immigrants. They hope to make the issue of immigration more prominent nationally and to pressure the Bush administration into providing more funding for border patrols. Casimiro spent three weeks in Naco, Ariz., earlier this year. He alerted authorities to one illegal immigrant, but he said he saw more important results than that. ''What we saw in Arizona is our presence certainly has energized [border enforcement] down there, because they don't want to be embarrassed," he said. John Pfeifer, assistant chief patrol agent for Customs and Border Protection in the sector that includes Vermont, defended the agency. ''Our resources are obviously not unlimited," Pfeifer said. ''But we work with what they give us, and I think we do a really good job of monitoring and enforcing the laws on the border." A couple of miles from the road where Casimiro left them, three of the Minutemen were still walking, grand houses on their left, the lake on their right. The rain quickly soaked them. ''This is really nice," said Weymouth police officer Bob Johnson. ''We get a foliage tour thrown in for no extra cost." The border in this part of Vermont is nothing like the mostly flat and open one that separates Arizona from Mexico, where the Minutemen staged a high-profile border watch that brought them to national prominence in April. This northern border is a slash through thick forest or a tree line a few yards from a road in the town of Holland, Vt. In Derby Line, it is narrow Lee Street, dotted with pretty Victorian houses, or the building at 209 Main St., where apartment 2A is in Canada and 2B is in the United States. It is the thin, black line that runs along the floor of the Haskell Free Library. It is a small obelisk in a field or in the backyard of a run-down house high on a hill. It is Canusa Avenue in the town of Beebe Plain, where residents on one side of the street are Canadians and those on the other are in the United States, and crossing the road to borrow a cup of sugar means passing through a checkpoint at the end of the street. It cuts through the middle of Lake Memphremagog. Border patrol officers arrested 1,927 people along the 195 miles of border in the Swanton sector, which includes Vermont and part of New York, between Oct. 1, 2004, and Sept. 30. Of those, 856 were crossing the border illegally. Others were picked up on expired visas and other violations. Along the 4,000-mile border between the United States and Canada, 7,340 people were arrested in the last fiscal year, 2,100 of those in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Those numbers are minuscule compared to arrests along the 1,951-mile border with Mexico, where over the same period about 1.2 million people were arrested by border patrol officers. Watching the northern border is far more complicated than it is in the South. Border patrol officers are constantly in motion through the border towns in this region, policing the boundary in all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, boats, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft that use infrared technology to survey the area at night. They also rely on residents to report anything suspicious. ''The residents are critical," Pfeifer said. ''The border goes through people's backyards and through buildings. Obviously, we can't put a camera and a sensor on every inch of the border, so we rely on the residents to call us. [Derby Line] is a real small town, so people know who belongs there and who does not." Residents in Derby Line were mostly opposed to the arrival of the Minutemen. ''I don't think they're needed," said Buzz Roy, a pharmacist. ''The border patrol does an ample job. I don't think we need a bunch of yahoos enforcing the law." Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government has tripled the number of officers patrolling the border and tightened the rules: It used to be easier for locals to cross the border, but now everybody in Derby Line has to check in every time they pass over it. ''I don't know why [the Minutemen are here]," said Florence Joyal, a sales assistant in Brown's Drugstore. ''We've got border patrol beaucoup. Security is tighter now." ''It's just another form of vigilantism," said James Griffin, 62, who came to Derby Line eight years ago. ''I think their agenda is racist, and they're just trying to impose their will. They're just another form of militia. I don't like their very presence, and I don't think Vermonters are going to be too happy to have them crossing over their land." Those criticisms are unjustified, said Casimiro, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Immigration Reform and leader of the 11 volunteers from Massachusetts, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, and Connecticut. ''It's very simple," he said. ''I'm just trying to save my country." ''National security is a big part of this," said Casimiro, 67, a retired design and project engineer. ''As far as I'm concerned, I don't care where it is, I just want the border secured. We cannot survive as a nation with porous borders like that. It affects our economy, and it affects our culture. We're just rapidly becoming a nation other than the one I grew up in." Casimiro had heard that people in Derby Line had defended the border patrol. He pointed out that the Minutemen were observers and that their aim is to call border patrol whenever they see illegal border crossers. ''Until the border is 100 percent secure, they're not doing a good job," Casimiro said. Back on the bike path, the three Minutemen trudged on in the rain. Finally, they knocked on Amy Audet's door to ask directions. The border, she told them, was in the opposite direction. Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com. Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.