This is a partial transcript from “Hannity & Colmes,” April 11, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.
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SEAN HANNITY, CO-HOST: The Minuteman Project continues to patrol for illegal immigrants on the 20-miles of border along the state of Arizona and Mexico. Joining us on now the phone from the border is the organizer of the Minuteman Project, James Gilchrist is with us.
James, welcome back.
JAMES GILCHRIST, MINUTEMAN PROJECT: Thank you, Sean. How are you?
HANNITY: What is the latest? Because our audience has shown a great interest in this story. And what’s more fascinating to me is the Mexican government responding to you guys being there — they are telling people now to move to different portions of the border or to wait until you guys go away.
GILCHRIST: That’s correct. Our recon elements, long even before we came here, told us that new trails have been cut to the west of us and some to the east of us. And the illegal aliens are doing exactly what we thought they would do, go around us rather than confront us.
However, we’ve had some serious activity in the last two days, including an attempted battery against one of our Minuteman Project volunteers with a vehicle intended to ram one of our vehicles. It was someone picking up — a coyote or a pickup driver picking up four illegal aliens.
The sheriff’s department responded to the battery. They arrested all five of them. That was this morning at about 10:00 a.m.
HANNITY: All right…
GILCHRIST: There is a lot of pile-up up in the Huachuca mountain range. We estimate a minimum of 2,000 just waiting to get down, maybe as many as 10,000.
HANNITY: James, give me — two things I want to ask you. Give me an update on the numbers of people that you have informed were crossing illegally that they have actually apprehended, number one.
And number two, last Friday when you were on the program and we were updating the program, there had been an allegation that you guys, or a member of your group, acted inappropriately towards somebody that was crossing when, in fact, the video showed just the opposite.
This, for example, shows the guy in your organization feeding, shaking hands, the two hugging together.
GILCHRIST: Giving him $20, a $20 bill.
HANNITY: Giving him a $20 bill, yes.
GILCHRIST: And water. We expected this. It was a little bit of inappropriate activity by the gentleman. I talked to him. To save his own face and also the embarrassment of this group here, he decided to resign and return to San Diego. And we accepted that. Just end of the story.
HANNITY: But you know what? But the allegation was false. This video clearly showed — it was totally exculpatory for him, because it showed him feeding, shaking hands, giving food and water, and everything you would want. And yet you’re being accused of having abused this guy. This guy can run away from this man if he wants. He never did. They were friends. It looks like they became friends almost.
GILCHRIST: Right. And his name is Jose. He was a 26-year-old from Mexico, and he even requested assistance from La Migra, from the Border Patrol.
This is part — this comes with the territory, Sean. When you try to assemble under the First Amendment to do something that others do not like what you’re doing, they will try to demonize you and literally destroy you. We’ve had three reporters under ruse and subterfuge come in here and film, try to get people to draw their weapons, which did not happen, try to get them to make racial statements.
These are dirty reporters. Only three of them, thank God, whose idea of reporting on the news is to actually create confrontational and negative news.
ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Hey, James, it’s Alan.
GILCHRIST: Hi, Alan.
COLMES: The last time you were on the show, or a couple of — one time last week — and I was critical of you for having the Aryan groups link you to their Web site. And you said it’s not just white supremacists, why are you picking on them? They are brown, they are purple, and they are red. Who are the purple supremacists?
GILCHRIST: No, the example — I remember that discussion, Alan. What I have found in the last four months of organizing this activity is that racism is not restricted just to your 16- to 60-year-old white guy in Georgia with a hood.
It is from every race, color and creed. There are Mexican racists who literally hate us. There are American Nazis who hate non-Nazis, and they hate me for doing this in a nonviolent way. They come from all races, colors and creeds.
COLMES: You’ve got a guy working with you, Glen Spencer, who is giving you some tactical support. He went to D.C. in ’02 or ’03 to burn the Mexican flag in front of the Mexican embassy. He wrote a letter to the L.A. Times, said “Mexico is a culture of deceit,” was arrested and convicted for shooting up his neighborhood at one point. Do you want to be in cahoots with these people?
GILCHRIST: He is not a member of the Minuteman Project. He called me, today, by the way. He’s got two unmanned aerial vehicles up in the air right now, and he’s doing a direct feed into our Web site. He is helping us.
What he did to his neighbor was shooting up his neighbor’s garage with that M-16 or something like that. And that’s between him and the person that he assailed, and him and his conscience.
COLMES: I see.
GILCHRIST: If he wants to help us and provide that type of observation to protect our Minutemen Project volunteers, we will accept it. That’s all I can say about that.
COLMES: All right, but, James, we’ve got to run. But for the record, you reject any and all associations with any racist group, and you said that before, correct?
GILCHRIST: Yes. And Glen Spencer, I don’t think is a white supremacist. I think — like I told Alan, he’s Jewish.
HANNITY: I wasn’t talking about him.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: All right. Just wanted to check. And at this point, I think there has been a lot of good. You’ve called a lot of attention to the biggest vulnerability that we have in national security. We’ll continue to follow this story. Thank you for being with us.
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