It’s easy to call Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist of Aliso Viejo a froth-mouthed racist agitator, especially if you ignore a few inconvenient truths.

By Steven M. Thomas
Photography by Challenge Roddie

Published in the Orange Coast Magazine
Read Full Article
Download Full Article

The Minuteman Reconsidered

The Minuteman Reconsidered
It’s easy to call Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist of Aliso Viejo a frothmouthed
racist agitator, especially if you ignore a few inconvenient truths
By Steven M. Thomas • Photography by Challenge Roddie
It would have been so much easier to write a profile of Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist
if he had turned out to be the unrepentant son of a bitch that he often is portrayed to be. I
could have interviewed a few of his many opponents, gleefully transcribing their charges of
racism and hatemongering, discounted as partisan his own statements and the support of his
friends, and tossed my indictment on the pile. But, no. Gilchrist was about to complicate my
life.
We had agreed to meet at 10 a.m. at a Starbucks at the broad suburban intersection of Alicia
Parkway and Pacific Park Drive near Gilchrist’s home in Aliso Viejo. He is late and comes in
looking harried, like someone with a hectic schedule who always runs 10 minutes behind.
Standing at 5 feet 8 inches, probably 165 pounds, he isn’t an intimidating physical presence,
but there is something very solid about him.
When I stand to greet him, he gives me a firm handshake and a smile that makes him look like
a grandfather of three, which he is. “Let me grab some coffee, and I’ll be right with you,” he
says, tossing a notebook and some papers on the small round table and hurrying toward the
counter.
I don’t know a great deal about Gilchrist, just what I’ve picked up from a handful of newspaper
articles over the past few years and skimmed from his Web site before driving down. As a
progressive Democrat, though, I am hard-wired to be suspicious of him and his cause. I’m rubbed the wrong way by the idea of a bunch of middle-class white people banding together to stop poor Mexicans from participating in the great tradition of building new lives in America. I
plan to be journalistically objective, of course, but I am fully prepared to buy into the negative
assumptions about Gilchrist that people like me often make. The trouble starts when he settles
into the chair opposite me and begins to speak.

Assumption No. 1
Jim Gilchrist is nothing but a shameless self-promoter.
Gilchrist is a Rhode Island native who has been married to his wife, Sandy, for 14 years. They
have two grown stepdaughters. He says his rise to the forefront of the immigration issue began
in the 1990s, when he and Sandy wrote to Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and their
congressman, Christopher Cox, on a regular basis, demanding action on the problem of illegal
immigration. They were concerned about the use of taxpayer dollars to provide services for
non-citizens and the government’s failure to enforce the laws of the land.
“All we ever got back were boilerplate replies from the politicians that [didn’t] address the
issue,” he says.
The issue took on new urgency for Gilchrist after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Outraged that
most of the Saudi attackers were in the country illegally, having overstayed their visas,
Gilchrist blamed the federal government for allowing the tragedy to happen. Deciding to get
more involved, he says he “started reading everything I could find on the subject and doing a
lot of research.”
The Minuteman Project, which Gilchrist describes as a multiethnic immigration law enforcement
advocacy group, was born Oct. 1, 2004, when he stayed up all night composing an e-mail
recruitment poster inviting people to join him on the Mexican border. “Within two weeks, that
e-mail ended up in 400,000 mailboxes,” he says.
Gilchrist crossed the border of American consciousness six months later, on April 1, 2005, when
he and his followers set up camp in the desert south of Tombstone, Ariz., to draw attention to
the problem of uncontrolled illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States. “I knew if I
could create the largest gathering of Minutemen since the Revolutionary War that it would have
an impact on the issue,” he says.
During the next 35 days, more than 1,000 people from around the country participated in the
controversial event, fanning out along a 24-mile stretch of the international border to look for
and report undocumented immigrants slipping into the country. The gathering sparked a media
frenzy, drew a charge of vigilantism from President Bush, and probably did more than any
other single event to push immigration reform to the center of the American political stage.
In the three years since then, Gilchrist has stayed relevant by advocating strict border control
and immigration-law enforcement in city council meetings, on college campuses, at border
events, and on more than 2,500 television and radio shows. His energetic agitation has helped
make immigration one of the top issues in the 2008 presidential election season.
Gilchrist also jumped into politics directly, running for Congress as an American Independent
and campaigning for candidates who support his views. The run for Congress made him look
good. After a whirlwind three-month campaign in fall 2005, he attracted a respectable 25.8
percent of the vote in a special election to fill the 48th District congressional seat vacated when
Cox was appointed chairman of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Republican
John Campbell won the election, but Gilchrist says, “I had a big smile on my face … the day
after the election. There were four bills dealing with immigration chaos introduced in Congress
that day. Ten weeks before, none of them were in the works. I have to give myself some credit
for that.”
Others give him credit as well. “Gilchrist was very effective in exploiting talk radio to make
illegal immigration a hot issue in the congressional campaign,” says Michael Capaldi, chairman
emeritus of Orange County’s iconic Lincoln Club, a nationally influential group of Republican
moneymen and power brokers. Adds Mark Petracca, chairman of the political science
department at the University of California, Irvine, “Gilchrist’s run for Congress in the open
primary election probably compelled the other candidates in this and other local and county
elections to focus more on immigration than would have been the case absent his candidacy.”
Local political blogs lit up recently with speculation that Gilchrist aims to unseat Democratic
U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez in the 47th district in November, a rumor he doesn’t deny.
“There’s a 50-50 chance I’ll get in,” he says.
If he does, it’s a safe bet that furious protesters will show up at every campaign stop accusing
him of being a hateful nativist marching arm-in-arm with the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan
Nation to trample the rights of Mexican immigrants.

Assumption No. 2
Jim Gilchrist is a froth-mouthed racist agitator masquerading as a reasonable man.
As Gilchrist sips coffee and explains what he stands for, the flaws in my assumptions jump out
at me.
A decorated Marine veteran who volunteered to fight in Vietnam when he was 18, arriving in
Quang Tri province near Khe Sanh in February 1968 at the tail end of the Tet offensive,
Gilchrist is passionately anti-war, viewing the Iraq conflict as a terrible mistake. He is a
registered Republican, but considers George W. Bush the worst president in American history.
He expresses strong and seemingly sincere support for multiculturalism, noting that one of his
stepdaughters is married to a Mexican-American man and two of his grandchildren are half-
Mexican. He points out that the Minuteman Project itself is a multiracial and multiethnic group
with African-Americans and Hispanics in positions of leadership.
“We have individuals who have immigrated here legally from countries like Cuba, Mexico, and
Peru who help Jim,” says Robin Hvidston, a college-educated mother and housewife who is
Gilchrist’s national rally organizer. “It is not a matter of race. It is a matter of upholding laws.”
Another surprise comes when he tells me that his border patrols were never intended to
actually stop illegal immigration. “That first border event was a dog-and-pony show,” he says.
“It was political activism. I organized it to draw attention to the failure of the government to
secure our borders, and it did that in spades. Patrolling the border is only about 5 or 10 percent
of what the Minuteman Project is about. The other 90 to 95 percent is driving this issue up
through city councils, mayors, state legislatures, and governors into the halls of Congress to
force change.”
As he talks, I’m struck by the reasonableness of many of his views on immigration. He is
passionate about “the rule of law” in American life and history, and believes that free flowing
illegal immigration and a failure to deal with illegal immigrants tend to undermine the nation’s
civic foundations. A retired certified public accountant with three college degrees, he has a
good grasp of numbers and makes effective points about the extent of illegal immigration, as
well as its economic and social consequences. Some of his harshest scorn is reserved for big
corporations and other businesses that employ undocumented workers.
“Enforcement against employers is key,” he says. “These big companies are engaged in a 21stcentury
slave trade, luring poor people north to work for dirt cheap wages and no benefits to
increase their profits. They are laughing all the way to the bank while hard-working citizens are
crying all the way to the poorhouse. If you come here impoverished and work for $8 an hour as
a carpenter, low wages keep you in poverty while you put a $40-an-hour union carpenter out of
work, and [then] we have twice as much poverty as before.”
Other of Gilchrist’s positions are arguable. He says he supports legal immigration but only for
people “who have integrity and character that will preserve us as a civilized nation governed
under the rule of law.” It’s not clear who, exactly, would gaze into the eyes of each potential
immigrant and divine whether they have a good heart or a bad one.
Gilchrist also advocates deporting undocumented people already in the country. The federal
government says there are 12 million of them in the United States, while Gilchrist puts the
number at 30 million. Either way, the idea of mustering the political will and practical ability to
find all those people, pluck them out of the social fabric, and expel them from the country
seems like a fantasy.
When I ask Gilchrist if he really believes it is possible, he talks about arresting employers to
make examples of them, cutting off welfare services, building a $6 billion wall along the entire
U.S.-Mexico border, and hiring more border guards, immigration investigators, prosecutors,
and judges to handle deportations.
“It’ll take time,” he says. “You have to educate the public, which is what I am trying to do. We
don’t live in a perfect, ideal society, and we never will, but somewhere between that ideal and
the way it is, there is a practical reality we can reach.”
Morning blends into afternoon as we talk. Workers and high school students on lunch break
crowd into the coffee shop. Several people stop to greet Gilchrist—an Afghan immigrant, a
sheriff’s deputy, and an elderly white woman, among others.
“I saw your picture in the paper,” the woman says, patting his shoulder. “I am for you. I
support what you are trying to do.”

Assumption No. 3
But seriously, he really is a froth-mouthed, hatemongering racist agitator underneath
it all, right?
The last thing I wanted to do was defend this guy and then have someone send me a video clip
of him uncorking his inner Lester Maddox. So I got to work conducting numerous interviews
and doing extensive research to see if I could find the Maddox clip myself.
The first thing I discovered was that Jim Gilchrist is a hard subject to get a handle on. There
are an infinite number of bloggy accusations against him, and an equal number of hateful anti-
Mexican rants in defense of him and his positions. Most, on both sides, are devoid of good
grammar and supporting evidence.
In the realm of verifiable reality, I interviewed serious people—academics, activists, and
political observers—and listened to those who say Gilchrist is a monster, as well as those who
say he is a great American. I also met with Gilchrist on the patio of the same Starbucks for
another long conversation, spoke to him frequently on the phone, and exchanged numerous emails
with him. He was always accessible and forthcoming with any information I requested.
In the end, I decided Gilchrist is partly responsible for many of his problems. He has an
unfortunate penchant for militarist metaphor. To him, the illegal immigration problem is “a
Trojan Horse invasion” and “the number of illegals crossing the border each week is equivalent
to four reinforced army divisions.” That kind of talk inflames his opponents and makes it easy
for them to think him inclined to violence. Though Gilchrist often shows remarkable forbearance
when under personal attack, he reacts in the long run with considerable hostility toward those
who denigrate him, hurling back in print and on air the charges of racism and rotten behavior
his critics aim at him, vowing to defeat and dismantle their organizations. Understandable, but
not a great public relations strategy. It doesn’t help that he sometimes sounds apocalyptic,
talking about illegal immigration leading to the breakup of the country along racial and ethnic
lines “like the old Soviet Union.”
Probably the biggest source of the animosity and confusion surrounding him stems from the
cause itself. While Gilchrist seems sincere about his desire for non-violence and racial
tolerance, the anti-immigration debate attracts many lowlifes whose words and behavior get
charged to him although he has never met them and doesn’t sanction their acts. He says there
are more than 200 independent groups that use the word “minuteman” in their title that have
nothing to do with his Minuteman Project. He is regularly called to account for the actions of
others.
On the other side, talking with Gilchrist’s opponents, reading what they write, and watching
their tactics on video, has been no less disturbing—and at times has made me ashamed to
consider myself a liberal. Remarkably uninformed, they pour bile on him like pitch from the
ramparts. They accuse him of murder, mental illness, cowardice, criminality, scapegoating, and
nativism—the politically correct term du jour for racism—but offer scant proof of their charges.

Assumption No. 4
Jim Gilchrist is an insignificant pipsqueak who has done little more than throw
gasoline on the fire.
Gilchrist is never more controversial than when he takes his message onto college and
university campuses. In October 2006, he was invited to speak about immigration reform at
Columbia University. When he stepped to the lectern, students organized by Hispanic campus
groups stormed the stage, knocked over the lectern and drove Gilchrist into the wings.
Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, not exactly an apologist for the right wing,
condemned Columbia students for silencing Gilchrist, calling the preplanned disruption “one of
the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.”
David Eisenbach, who teaches media and politics at Columbia, remembers the repercussions
that followed. “Columbia was bashed in just about every publication in New York City, from the
New York Post to the New York Times, for not being able to carry out its duty to ensure free
speech,” he says. “It was shameful the way the event erupted into fisticuffs.”
Eisenbach adds that when he tried to bring Gilchrist back to the campus for the one-year
anniversary of the disrupted speech, socialist and Hispanic student groups blocked the event.
A year later, in November 2007, students invited Gilchrist to debate the immigration issue at
California State University, Long Beach. Other students and professors banded together to form
the Campus Coalition Against Hate in response, condemning Gilchrist by the very title of their
organization. They organized a counter-rally and refused to debate him, citing the Columbia
incident as evidence that he was “looking to provoke” conflict and violence.
Enrique Morones, a San Diego immigrant-rights activist, eventually agreed to debate Gilchrist
at Cal State Long Beach, but then, after insisting that he be allowed to speak first, launched
into a 10-minute series of personal attacks, accusing several people not present who he said
were connected with Gilchrist of being child molesters and criminals, and then saying that
Gilchrist himself is mentally ill, has a criminal record, and was the laughingstock of the Marine
Corps when he was fighting in Vietnam. Morones then led a planned walkout of students
opposed to Gilchrist who had packed the auditorium.
Gilchrist stayed calm, saying only that Morones was lying. Someone shouted that those leaving
the auditorium were liberal scum, but Gilchrist hushed his supporter. “They are not liberal
scum,” he said. “They are just uninformed.” He then gave a two-hour talk mostly about the
importance of the First Amendment to the 50 or 60 students who remained.
When I asked Morones afterward for evidence to back up his charges, he seemed outraged that
I questioned his truthfulness—but did not provide a scrap of proof.
Norma Chinchilla, chairwoman of the Chicano and Latino Studies Department and one of the
leaders of the Campus Coalition Against Hate at Long Beach, offers another reason why she
declined to debate Gilchrist. “I don’t consider him a major voice in the immigration debate,”
she says, concurring with Victor M. Rodriquez, a professor in her department. “Who is James
Gilchrist?” Rodriquez asks. “He is not an expert on immigration.”
Convenient if true, but plenty of others see Gilchrist as a leading player. Republican presidential
candidate Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, consulted with Gilchrist on his
immigration policy and solicited his endorsement last fall, trumpeting it on the front page of his
campaign Web site and on “Larry King Live” when Gilchrist endorsed him in December. “No one
can question Jim’s commitment to this country and the immigration problem,” Huckabee says.
A number of polls conducted by network and cable news organizations in 2005 and 2006 show
that a solid majority of Republicans support Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project. A 2005 Rasmussen
Survey of 1,000 adults found that 54 percent of all Americans had a favorable opinion of the
Minutemen. Adds Michael Capaldi of the Lincoln Club: “No one else on the anti-illegal
immigration side has had the impact that he has. Gilchrist knows how to light the bonfires and
keep them burning. He’s a voice that you can’t ignore.”
Still, Chinchilla calls Gilchrist an extremist who is operating outside the political mainstream
and who needlessly showed up for the Long Beach debate wearing a bullet-proof vest outside
his suit coat. Gilchrist, who has a penchant for political theater, says he wore the vest to help
engage students in a discussion about the dangers of speaking out on controversial subjects
and the importance of the First Amendment. Professors Chinchilla and Rodriquez say the vest
was a melodramatic provocation, proof that Gilchrist is a troublemaker.
Their reaction, of course, ignores the fact that members of the anti-Gilchrist group showed up
with tape over their mouths and bandanas hiding their faces.
A few weeks after the uproar at Cal State Long Beach, a Gilchrist appearance at Long Beach
City College was canceled for security reasons. Byron D. Breland, that college’s dean of student
affairs, insists the decision was not driven by a political agenda. The cumulative result,
arguably, was that the students who disrupted and protested Gilchrist at Columbia and Cal
State Long Beach helped silence him at City College.
In one sense, the attitude of people such as Chinchilla and Rodriquez toward Gilchrist is wholly
understandable. There is a long, ugly history of anti-Latino racism in California and the United
States, and racism persists today. But that protective attitude can easily go too far. History is
full of oppressed people who later become repressive themselves.
“People around here try to suppress everything like we are a communist school or something,”
says Cal State Long Beach junior Jason Aula, the student leader who invited Gilchrist to
campus. “It is like you are not free to have an opposing viewpoint. But we are not going to be
intimidated by people. Illegal immigration is not a Democrat or Republican issue. It is an
American issue, and we have a right to express and maintain our side of that issue in a
respectful, non-racist way. That is what America is about.”

Assumption No. 5
Jim Gilchrist must somehow be getting rich, as well as famous, from all this.
Gilchrist serves as president of the Minuteman Project without pay, takes no reimbursement for
car or phone expenses, and has borrowed against his home to tide the organization over when
expenses outpaced donations, loaning as much as $70,000 of his own money to the cause. He
receives a steady stream of death threats, some of which are posted on his Web site under the
heading “Hate Mail.” He says his windshield has been smashed and his car keyed.
So why does he do it?
Chinchilla believes he likes the limelight: “I think he has just latched onto an issue that he can
get some response on,” she says. Ted Hayes, a Los Angeles homeless advocate, disagrees,
insisting that Gilchrist is “motivated by love for country.”
Gilchrist, a self-professed “Navy brat” who attended nine schools before graduating from high
school, says he joined the Marine Corps right out of high school because he wanted to defend
his country. He knows now that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was bogus and believes the Vietnam
War was a mistake, but the urge to serve is still there. He knows how difficult it is to force
change in the face of entrenched interests, but believes he is making a difference.
“Jim Gilchrist came along at a time in my life when I felt very alone and believed that nobody
knew what was going on and nobody cared,” says Barbara March, mother of David March, a Los
Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who was killed by an illegal immigrant gang member who fled
to Mexico to avoid prosecution. “He is a hero who is trying to help his country.”
Gilchrist named his first camp at the border Camp David March to honor the slain deputy.
“That touched us so deeply,” says John March, David’s father. “Our goal has always been to
make Dave’s life and death count. As a result of the awareness the Minuteman Project brought
to the border, and of what my wife, and I, and others have done, all of a sudden Mexico has
had to change its extradition policy. Dozens of killers of U.S. citizens have already been
extradited back to the United States. Politicians are now starting to talk seriously about
securing our border. Jim Gilchrist was instrumental in that monumental change.”
Gilchrist says he doesn’t enjoy the constant conflict in his life, but isn’t surprised at the hostility
directed at him. Despite the trials and turmoil, he says he will continue until he gets the results
he wants— or someone comes along to take his place.
Talking about Vietnam, as he often does, Gilchrist says, “I think about that place every day,
more than once a day. I mostly remember it as a very tragic place. I have some good
memories of my experience there, too, and I wouldn’t trade my tour of duty for a million
dollars. But I wouldn’t do it again for a billion.”
In the end, he may look back on his immigration activism in the same way.
And the Easiest Assumption Of All?
Jim Gilchrist is a crook.
Jim Gilchrist’s image took a hard hit when several of his close associates tried to take over the
Minuteman Project early in 2007. The group accused him of stealing donated money and
announced that they had fired him as head of the organization.
Guy Mailly, Gilchrist’s attorney, calls the takeover attempt “so silly on its face that it is
incredible. Jim is the founder of the Minuteman Project. He has never relinquished control of
the organization. He was the sole member of the board of directors and is still the sole member
of the board of directors.” In addition, Gilchrist controls the Web site
www.minutemanproject.com and continues to function as the group’s leader and spokesman in
high-profile appearances on national television and with national political candidates.
Still, the charges were widely and uncritically reported around the county and country. A civil
trial in Orange County Superior Court in May should settle outstanding issues, but so far the
process has seemed to vindicate Gilchrist and raise questions about the validity of the charges
against him. Among those questions:
1. The Minuteman Project was incorporated by Gilchrist in Delaware with Gilchrist as the sole
member of the board of directors. How did his associates have the authority to fire him as
president of the organization?
2. Why did Orange County Superior Court Judge Randell Wilkinson issue an injunction in March
2007, barring the takeover group from using the Minuteman Project name, spending the
organization’s money, or doing fundraising under its guise?
3. If Gilchrist was embezzling, why was he never arrested or charged with a crime, and why is
he so willing to make available a certified audit of the Minuteman Project’s finances during the
period in question?
4. Why has the takeover group been cut loose by several attorneys in succession—most
recently by the law firm of Gilbert & Marlowe, which sent a letter Nov. 1, 2007, describing a
communications breakdown, asking the takeover group to sign a substitution of attorney form,
and threatening legal action against the group?—S.M.T.
—Steven M. Thomas is a writer based in Orange. Ballantine will release his Orange
County crime novel, “Criminal Paradise,” on Feb. 28.

All Rights Reserved ® Orange Coast Magazine 2008

Minuteman Project Receives Approval!

Archive -
Hate Mail -
MMP Chapters -
Supportive Email -

Operation Generation -
Presidential Candidates Survey -
Legal and Accounting for MMP -
Citizen's Complaint Department -
PROCLAMATION to Release Agents Ramos and Compean -

A TRIBUTE TO JIM GILCHRIST AMERICAN HERO

New from Jim Gilchrist
Coins personally designed by 21st century minuteman Jim Gilchrist, the founder and president of the Minuteman Project.

Buy Now

Don't put your business at risk: you must verify the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees through proper and timely Form I-9 completion. Hiring illegal workers is risky business. Failure to properly comply can carry extraordinary penalties including loss of your business license or even prison. Fines range from $275 up to $11,000 per individual I-9.