Crossing the Line

A car slows, and a young Latino man on the passenger's side shouts an obscenity at Simcox.

"That didn't sound nice, did it?" he says, smiling tightly.

He reaches under his T-shirt for a moment, making some adjustment to the padding beneath it. Simcox, who last year married for the third time, is concerned for his safety these days. He frequently tells crowds that he has been struck by rocks and shot at by people on the other side of the border. He smooths the T-shirt, looking over his listeners' shoulders.

A question from a supporter brings him back to the point of his visit to this street corner. "Yes, we're trying to bring attention to the business owners in Phoenix who are fed up here with the crime being committed by the illegals, and all the litter," he says.

In a sign that, at least in Arizona, the group's appeal has come to extend beyond a core conservative constituency, a chiropractor named Melody Jafari is waiting down the street for the Minutemen when they gather for a post-protest debriefing in a parking lot. A self-described "apolitical moderate" careful not to label herself a Minuteman, Jafari is nonetheless supportive of Simcox's efforts, in part because her office parking lot is a gathering spot for day laborers. "There are so many of them, and they are all over . . . and they are hurting my business," she says. "I may not agree with them on everything, but the Minutemen are the only ones who've stood up for people like me."

The morning ends with Simcox telling the Minutemen that they have sent a message to day laborers in Phoenix and across the country that their criminality will soon be halted. He shakes hands and leaves. Within an hour, a pack of day laborers has gathered near and around 36th and Thomas. First haltingly, then regaining its everyday momentum, the hiring resumes.

"See, they are already coming back," Jafari says.

"It's easy," says a day laborer named Francisco Hernandez, a Mexican national who has been in this country for five months. "You just wait for the angry people to go."

TAPLIN HAS REACHED THE CORNER OF ELDEN STREET and Alabama Drive, the site of the Herndon 7-Eleven, where about 80 workers stand behind a blue line in the parking lot. "We need to get going here," he says, turning to one of his crew. "Joe, you ready?"

Joe runs a hand through his gray hair and takes a deep breath. "All set."

It is not clear what Joe is set for, because Joe won't say, leaving it to Taplin to disclose any specifics. "It's on a need-to-know basis," says Joe, who won't give his last name "because who knows who might get ahold of it. Nothing personal. I didn't give my name out to a lot of people down at the [U.S.-Mexico] border, either. They want to make a big deal about it if you carry a gun."

"Okay, Joe needs to get going," Taplin says.