CALEXICO, CA—Hundreds of people from across California will converge at the International Border Park, First and Paulin Streets inn Calexico on Saturday, September 17 at 5:00 p.m. to rally and march against the presence of vigilante minutemen on the California border.

Beginning at East Los Angeles College at 11:00 a.m., La Tierra es de Todos will convoy to Calexico in cars and passenger vans. The Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen has chartered two buses to transport people from the San Francisco area. Gente Unida and The o.r.g.a.n.i.c. Collective from San Diego will also caravanning to Calexico, where opponents of the minutemen will meet up with Calexico residents in a joint protest with residents of Mexicali across the border.

Last week, the Calexico City Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning civilian border patrol groups. "They are not needed here," Alex Perrone, the mayor of Calexico, elaborated. "If they come, I am going to tell these minutemen and Friends of the Border Patrol, 'Go there to New Orleans. Show you're patriotic and help your fellow man.'"

The Mexican press routinely refers to the armed civilian groups collectively calling themselves minutemen as “cazamigrantes,” or migrant hunters. Since April, the migrant hunters have taken up positions along the border to assist the U.S. Border Patrol in arresting and detaining border crossers.

The appearance of the minutemen has sparked a broad mobilization of migrant and Latino rights organizations on both sides of the border. Ranging from the mainstream League of United Latin American Citizens to the Chicano Brown Berets, organizations are convening demonstrations throughout California, Arizona, and Texas, promoting local government resolutions and calling for cross-border boycotts. Meeting in Mexico City last spring, immigrant and human rights associations from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Spain, and Mexico signed a joint declaration with US migrant advocates opposing the minutemen.

In July, even as they flouted rifles, shotguns, and sidearms, the civilian California Border Patrol was rousted by opponents from Campo, where “rogue” minutemen shot and wounded two migrants. CPB returned to the border on September 11 to replace the one hundred U.S. Border Patrol agents dispatched to New Orleans.

Opponents of the minutemen timed their protest in Calexico to coordinate with the arrival of Friends of the Border Patrol. Andy Ramirez, who headed the Proposition 187 Save Our State effort, organized this newest anti-migrant group. Ron Prince, co-author of Prop 187, chairs FBP.

Since the beginning of the minuteman patrols in Arizona last April, the minutemen have been plagued with smaller than anticipated turnout and large crowds of opponents demanding the minutemen “go home.”