Government distrust, religion guides Minuteman Civil Defense Corps member

Terry Marshall is not afraid – to stand sentry in the Arizona desert watching for illegal immigrants or to say what he thinks, even when he knows saying “liberals are born with a psychological disorder” or that the world’s poorest are reaping just consequences because “they didn’t take their country back,” is like acid thrown in the faces of immigration reform advocates.

Terry Marshall (photo by Beth Dalbey/The Iowa Independent)

But among some like-minded citizens identified as increasingly distrustful of government in recent report by The Pew Research Center, his words are an urgent mantra.

A 60-year-old factory worker from Council Bluffs, Marshall is a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a volunteer citizens’ border patrol founded in 2002 by former Arizona school teacher Chris Simcox and Carmen Mercer, a German immigrant who took a legal path to U.S. citizenship.

The MCDC, which at one point claimed as many as 12,000 members, has officially disbanded in response to liability fears that some zealous members may take their anti-immigration crusade too far. Though the MCDC is rebuilding, the volunteer patrol still maintains a presence in southern Arizona, where Marshall said he received orders to report on April 20.

He also claims allegiance to the Guardians of the Free Republics, a group that recently called for the resignation of Gov. Chet Culver and 30 other U.S. governors. An intelligence note from the Department of Homeland Security said the group’s “Restore America Plan” calls for the removal of any governor who refused to resign within three days of receiving the letters (none did), and whose plans include, according to the note, “establishing bogus courts, calling of ‘de jure’ grand juries, and issuing so-called ‘legal orders’ to gain control of the state.”

Homeland Security officials said they had no specific indications of violence, but that “law enforcement should be aware that this could be interpreted as a justification for violence or other criminal actions.”

Marshall joined the MCDC after becoming aware of the movement via Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo, who opened an office in Council Bluffs for his fledgling 2008 presidential campaign.

“I liked what he was saying about illegal immigration,” Marshall said. “That was the beginning.”

However encompassing, Marshall’s path to conservatism wasn’t swift.  “I got a little off-track in the 1960s,” he said. “I was a radical, a hippie, did the drugs and the anti-war thing.”

Marshall grew up in traditional Democrat home where union organizing was a family tradition and FDR was held in almost sainted regard. He helped bring a union to the former Frito-Lay plant in Council Bluffs and was involved in other rallying issues for the Democratic Party.  Marshall’s former wife was the executive director of Planned Parenthood in Council Bluffs for eight years, and he says he “got tied up with the NOW (National Organization for Women) crowd in D.C. strictly through association with my wife.”

“I’m a supporter of women’s rights,” he said, “but when they didn’t get it right, I had to correct them.  I attended some functions with them. I have been in some drunken messes, but I have never seen such behavior. They were pointing fingers at others, but their personal lives didn’t reflect what they were saying.”

Marshall recalls that as a turning point when he began to rebel against the politics that had been handed to him like a birthright.

“When Rush Limbaugh came onto the scene, he started saying certain things I was thinking and had been questioning on my own,” Marshall said. “He made clear sense of them.”

‘GEE WHIZ, HOW MANY ARE THERE?’

Marshall wears a side iron, conceals a knife and carries a rifle while guarding the desert. He says he’s never drawn or fired his weapons, but he has felt uneasy.

“I’m careful that I don’t get flanked, and I handle [illegal immigrants] with intimidation,” he said. “That works pretty well.”

He claims such vigilance is an appropriate response to a culture of bold lawlessness surrounding his post near Sierra Vista, Ariz., a small town about 15 miles north of the border and one of the busiest corridors for illegal immigration.

“Gee whiz, how many are there?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s overwhelming. They are illegal, but they are here. I know it’s not politically correct, but you can tell they’re an illegal because they’re not American. They cannot speak English. If they would just speak English properly, it wouldn’t bother me at all.”

Marshall says he and other MCDC members aren’t in the desert to enforce the law, though he wishes federal border patrol agents were more vigilant in their jobs.

Undocumented immigrants who are stopped at the border “know that they are kind of tokens, because the government really doesn’t care,” Marshall said. “I’m pretty much doing this because they’re not doing their jobs. It seems like something I should be doing. I don’t have any other ambition other than to be relieved of the responsibility to have to do this.”

Until a serious crackdown occurs, Marshall vows to stand unflappable in the desert, a virtue he claims separates him from others in the sovereignty movement – for example, the Minutemen Patriots, another group with support in Iowa – that he believes lack purpose.

“The difference is that I have been through a thought process and put it into action, and they have not taken the action yet,” Marshall says. “I know lots of Minutemen, but I only know two who are not afraid. They talk the talk, but when it comes down to the wire, they aren’t willing to finish the job.”

Critics claiming the MCDC and similar anti-immigration groups are racially motivated are “psychologically deficient,” Marshall said. “White people discriminate because of class. Others may discriminate against color, and it’s all color based, but we as caucasians are against people of a different class coming up here to destroy what we have.”

“Women serve no purpose. They take these girls – they have nothing – and get them on this side, and once they’re pregnant, get them to deliver on this side and get social services. We know we have tons of money being spent to induce labor in girls. In California, they’re selling people for parts, people whose lives don’t mean much to them. This is the mentality we’re dealing with. I don’t want that for my children.”

MISGUIDED HUMANITARIANISM

Marshall is answering what he calls a higher calling, reporting for duty in a battle be believes will be resolved in a showdown between Christianity and Islam, “the only two religions coming from the God of Israel,” he said. “The whole thing is Biblical. There is something bigger at work that we don’t quite understand.”

From Marshall’s perspective, that “something” is Satan setting himself up in mainstream churches that have adopted what he calls misguided humanitarian missions to lift people out of poverty and help them to find a better life in the United States, regardless of how they got here and regardless of the law. For example, when the Catholic and Methodist churches in Postville offered sanctuary to hundreds of Guatemalan and Mexican families after a 2008 raid at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, clergy were “aiding and abetting” illegal activity, breaking the Bible’s Eighth Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.”

The country of origin of those receiving temporary asylum in churches is irrelevant to Marshall, who says his philosophy holds whether talking about illegal immigrants from Latin American countries close to U.S. borders or refugees who wandered another desert, in Africa, to escape genocide, as did several “Lost Boys of Sudan” who legally resettled in Iowa. The United States owes these people nothing, according to Marshall.

“They didn’t take their country back,” he reasons. “To people who would say ‘there are people living in such poverty in that country,’ I do not feel sorry for them. They are living in poverty because they did not take their country back. We will be living in poverty in this country if we do not take it back.

“We all know people who came up from nothing and now have something. Anyone can do the same. Or they don’t have to do anything — they can just die. That works, too.”

Marshall insists he’s not a conspiracy theorist, but he believes a global cabal is under way to weaken the United States to third-world status. Weakening the United States to third-world status through illegal immigration is but one strategy, but an important one that lays the foundation.

There are many signs that sides are already dividing up, Marshall says, but he doesn’t believe the battle to restore a constitutional government must necessarily end in civil war.

“We have a process in place that works if we would just get on board,” he said. “Representative government isn’t the government telling us what to do, but us telling them. It’s not ordering health insurance, it’s called personal responsibility.

“We need to forget about what’s going on with football or TV and get involved in this country. I think this is why we have all this: to keep us divided. “

Though he won’t speak for others similarly disenchanted with government, he is prepared for peaceful resistance. He chooses his battles carefully, distancing himself from other sensational, domestically instigated anti-government incidents, such as the 1993 clash with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that ended with the burning of the Branch Davidian ranch near Waco, Texas, or the standoff in northern Idaho between former Iowan Randy Weaver and the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI.

“Not for any of that will I fight to defend my country,” Marshall says.

But would he fight?

Marshall is coy. “You can say ‘yes’ all you want,” he says finally, “but when you go up against U.S.military, you’re going to get fantastic weapons because they have really good stuff.”