Monday, February 09, 2009

I will enter your country illegally...and if you try to stop me, I'll sue you!

This is yet another reason to support the building of a fence.

An Arizona man who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as "the avenue of choice" for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes.
...
In March, U.S. District Judge John Roll rejected a motion by Mr. Barnett to have the charges dropped, ruling there was sufficient evidence to allow the matter to be presented to a jury. Mr. Barnett's attorney, David Hardy, had argued that illegal immigrants did not have the same rights as U.S. citizens.
...
Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil - which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their "clients" to keep them running.

4 Comments:

Blogger Reid said...

In Texas you can shoot tresspassers.

Mon Feb 09, 03:42:00 PM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You can shoot them in Arizona as well...hell you can shoot anyone anywhere...just don't get caught!

Mon Feb 09, 06:13:00 PM EST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In Texas you cannot shoot trespassers.

In Texas you can use force to eject trespassers if they fail to leave after ordered to leave, but you cannot use force to hold trespassers.

Mr. Barnett should have gone up to the trespassers and said, leave; if they did not, he could have used reasonable force to eject them, which usually means phoning the police, unless he or anybody was in imminent danger, in which case he can use force to eject the trespassers.

When a texan is justified in shooting a trespasser, it is not the act of trespassing that justifies the shooting, but a threat of imminent, deadly harm from the trespasser, which would justify shooting whether the threat was a trespasser or not.

Mr. Barnett is a vigilante, and that is why he is being sued. BTW, in the circumstances of this case, the Mexicans may have been justified shooting Mr. Barnett as he was illegally threatening them with deadly force, even though they were trespassing.

Mon Feb 09, 06:32:00 PM EST  
Blogger Jarrett said...

^ Was going to say the same thing more or less but was beat to the punch.

Wed Feb 11, 01:07:00 AM EST  

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