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On a tucked-away ranch off a dirt road south of Sierra Vista, Arizona, Glenn Spencer is mounting his last stand.

The former oil-man moved to this border property from California six years ago to direct the American Border Patrol’s efforts to mount an internet-based vigilante border security program he calls Operation Virtual Vigilance. The 100-acre ranch boasts little more than a triple-wide mobile home, a shop, and tens of thousands of dollars of high-tech customized surveillance equipment. In a location where it is a technological feat to acquire phone service, much less high speed internet, a sophisticated network of surveillance cameras stream their video signals to the internet in real-time. American Border Patrol says "virtual volunteers" as distant as West Virginia and Pennsylvania are now using their home computers to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border for illegal entrants.

Though American Border Patrol’s network of cameras only covers 10 miles of border, Spencer says volunteers have already reported intruders to the U.S. Border Patrol. To participate, all volunteers must pass a background check. After obtaining security clearance, volunteers are assigned a 30-minute block, in which they can operate one of the handful of cameras located on the ranch. If a volunteer sees suspicious activity, they contact American Border Patrol headquarters where an on-site member will confirm the sighting and notify the U.S. Border Patrol.

As a secondary program, Border Enforcement Evaluation First or Operation B.E.E.F., the American Border Patrol also operates a Cessna airplane to perform regular aerial surveys over portions of the border. The goal of this program is to use high definition video and still photos "to document changes in border infrastructure" and to present these images to the public using Google Earth and You Tube as a way of surveying the degree to which Homeland Security if beefing up security on the border.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that advocates for racial justice, includes the American Border Patrol on its list of anti-immigrant hate groups on the basis of sweeping derogatory statements Spencer has made about Mexicans and Mexican culture as well as his affiliation with white supremacist magazine, American Renaissance.

Posted: May 21, 2008