Campo, CA, July 30, 2005--My partner and I hooked up at an exit off the I-8. I had one idea: to keep migrants at the Mexican border safe from the border vigilantes. A week ago I had left Campo early, and rogue migrant hunters had shot two border crossers later that night.

Dusk was turning to darkness by the time we had driven by the ranches and houses and around the winding twelve-mile road, and finally past the VFW building where the James Chase and his California Minutemen were undertaking their California Border Action, carrying arms and hunting migrants for the U.S. Border Patrol. A mile up a potholed dirt road striped with rain gullies and we were at the counter-protesting Gente Unida camp.

After handing over our first aid supplies for the Desert Angels' glimmering ambulance—they already had twenty gallons of water to disperse across the desert that night for border crossers—my partner and I waited for the night’s plan.

Besides the two shooting casualties, the Minutemen had managed in two weeks to turn three migrants over to the border patrol, and one of Minuteman was claiming someone, perhaps a Mexican national, had put a $25,000 bounty on his head. The sheriff had determined to keep Gente Unida and the Minutemen apart for fear that someone would try to collect, so tonight we would not climb the hill to stand off the Minutemen at their camp. Last week we had shouted down the vigilantes, some armed with multiple handguns and waving shotguns at the counter-protestors. Tonight would not be like that.

The camp leader drove out to the bluff in front of the camp where the sheriffs were perched and, after a few minutes of conversation, returned with the night’s action: tonight we would be hunting the cazamigrantes. He and a camp member climbed into their vehicle and invited my partner and me to follow in ours. We drove to the Minutemen’s camp and turned into their parking area, where about fifteen Minutemen were gathered. We circled slowly through the lot and returned to our base.

After reconnoitering with the Gente Unida group, the leader dispersed our camp to their positions and the four of us drove back to the Minutemen lot, now mostly empty. This time, we were led through and out the other side, to Route 94. Sure enough, ahead of us climbing a hill were the taillights of a dozen Minutemen vehicles making their way to the border. We raced up the hill and fell in line behind them. About half a mile behind us, a sheriff’s headlights flashed around the curves and over the hills.

We drove through the dark, twisting, and impassable two-lane roads for twenty minutes or so, until, ahead of us, two of the Minutemen cars pulled off to the side, and the sheriff pulled in behind them. We continued with the caravan, the Minutemen cars slipped in behind us, and we were surrounded. The sheriff’s car moved in closer to the Minutemen’s tailing car.

Another twenty minutes went by, winding through streets that in the daylight were probably filled with moms chauffeuring kids, ranchers moving stock and supplies, the day’s business of a small community that I had only seen at night and only through the lens of vigilante occupation. The caravan pulled off near the border and stopped, and Minutemen scurried back and forth past our window, reduced to face-to-face conversations in the absence of a cell phone signal.  Our guide cranked up some Mexican music to alert  migrants. The caravan pulled out and drove a few miles further until the Minutemen caravan pulled over again, at the center of the sleepy, dark town. A lone resident was using the payphone under the wooden awning of an unlit storefront. Minutemen maneuvered their vehicles so that they lined the other side of the street, as well as posting themselves before and behind us. Sheriffs hung at either end of the road, about a hundred yards in each direction from the standoff.

We sat in silence, except for the occasional chirp of a walkie-talkie and the scuffle of feet on the ashpalt. One woman snapped a few pictures of us; another shown a spotlight into our vehicles from across the road for a moment or two. I slipped on a handy pair of sunglasses. Then one by one, the Minutemen vehicles glided down the road into the darkness. The sheriffs disappeared. We turned and headed off in the direction the Minutemen had gone.

Our guide knew the roads, and he knew the Minutemen’s habits. We passed a couple of their vehicles along the side of the road and followed others onto tertiary streets until they turned around and came out, unable to embark on their hunt or unwilling to give away their compatriots’ positions. We stopped and stretched and admired the night sky, the Milky Way, and stars a dozen layers deep. I thought of a news report I’d heard that day, that a tenth planet in our solar system had been found past Pluto, and pondered that centuries of human education that had come down to keeping people with weapons from killing people without weapons, and discovering a planet that had been there since the beginning of time.

We turned back onto the main road, and ahead of us was the James Chase’s vehicle! We took off following Chase for a few miles, until we turned into the bright lights of a convenience store. As we leaned on our cars munching on chips, quaffing juice, and comparing notes, Chase pulled in behind us and went into the store, perhaps unaware of our presence. Our guide pulled out a bullhorn when Chase emerged and, leaning back on his SUV, denounced Chase to the small crowd of locals for his history of domestic violence, for his dismissal from the postal service, for his expulsion from the regional Minuteman Project, for his migrant hunting.

Back in the darkness, we followed Chase’s turns and U-turns for a few more miles until he stopped. He walked over to our guide’s vehicle. Leaning into the window, still presumably irate at being exposed at the convenience store, he threatened to call the sheriffs if our guide didn’t stop stalking him. A few miles later we were again surrounded by Minutemen vehicles and, yet again, we pulled off to the side with them. The street was lit only by the amber glow of parking lights, now without sheriffs in sight. We waited.  Finally, the Minutemen vehicles spun away up the road except for three that stayed behind to escort us slowly up the street toward camp.  The lead car scanned the roadside with a spotlight, seeming to look for migrants but too far from the border to be effective. This time, we were the first to pull off to the side. The lead car disappeared into the night, and the vehicles behind us spun out and followed into the darkness.

We went back to our camp. Our guide had figured out where the California Minutemen would be for the night, and the Buenas Noches Patrol, with their noisemakers and other disruptions were dispatched. And we had kept border crossers safe from the hunters for four hours.

Next Saturday, August 6, the last weekend of the California Minutemen's presence on the border, a major counter-demonstration will begin at 4:00 p.m. at the Gente Unida camp.