23 August 2005 Blog Home : August 2005 : Permalink
Spent shells litter the ground at what is left of the firing range, and camouflage outfits still hang in a storeroom. Just a few months ago, this ranch was known as Camp Thunderbird, the headquarters of a paramilitary group that promised to use force to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking across the border with Mexico.
Now, in a turnabout, the 70-acre property about two miles from the border is being given to two immigrants whom the group caught trying to enter the United States illegally.
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"Certainly it's poetic justice that these undocumented workers own this land," said Morris S. Dees Jr., co-founder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which represented the immigrants in their lawsuit.
Mr. Dees said the loss of the ranch would "send a pretty important message to those who come to the border to use violence."
Last week I criticised Thomas Sowell for what I consider to be some poor economics that he shares with a lot of the "closed border" people, but in this case I stand with them. It seems to me that the former owner and his "vigilante" buddies would have done better to have simply shot these people and buried the bodies. The fact that they showed leniency allowed a bunch of liberal ambulance chasing lawyers to abuse the US justice system and provide an additional incentive for illegals to come as one of the Minutemen says in the article:"The illegals are coming over here," Mr. Dore said. "They are getting the American property. Hell, I'd come over, too. Get some American property, make some money from the gringos."
It is completely beyond me why anyone, even a legal resident, should expect to receive millions of dollars from people who detained them when they were trespassing. Especially when said people, having detained them for an hour gave them cookies and a blanket and sent them on. If ever there was a sign of a justice system that has been hijacked by the loonies this is it.