Minutemen hit D.C.

Jim Gilchrist

Members of the Minuteman Project will stage a rally at the U.S. Capitol today to celebrate the end of a cross-country caravan meant to protest the flow of illegal aliens across the border.

"This is a Trojan horse – a covert invasion," Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, said of illegal immigration.

The caravan began in Los Angeles May 3, and participants have been holding rallies in several states along the way. The caravan's "official pace car" is a 1970 Mercury Cougar dubbed "The Spirit Of Allegiance."

The final rally is scheduled for 11 a.m. today at the park on the Senate side of the Capitol.

Prominent national speakers at the kick-off rally in L.A. included WND columnist Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, the founder and president of BOND – the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and social activist Ted Hayes.

Addressing the rally, Peterson commented, "Illegal immigration is having a devastating effect on the black community. African Americans are being put out of jobs and out of homes."

A rally also occurred May 6 in Crawford, Texas, home to President Bush's ranch.

"We are doing what the original Minutemen would have wanted us to do," Gilchrist told WND. "We are bringing the message to Washington."

According to its website, the Minuteman Project hopes to "bring national awareness to the decades-long careless disregard of effective U.S. immigration law enforcement."

A recent poll indicates concern about illegal immigration is now the No. 2 issue among Americans, next to the war in Iraq.

Gilchrist, who is being talked about as a 2008 presidential candidate, believes that by Election Day in November, "voters will show conclusively that illegal entry by foreigners on U.S. soil and the issue of 'guest worker amnesty' is at least as important to the American people as the war in Iraq."

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