Last year, a strained U.S. border patrol managed to catch 1.1 million illegal immigrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico. Half of those were picked up on the Arizona border. Many more however get through.

Now, hundreds of volunteers from across the U.S. are gathering this month to bring attention to the issue and take matters into their own hands. They call themselves Minutemen. The Bush administration, they say, needs to clamp down and if it won’t, they will.

Not everyone supports the Minutemen’s call to action. Critics call it vigilantism, anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican. Meanwhile, a roaring national debate on illegal immigration goes unresolved.

Hear about the brewing standoff on the Arizona-Mexico border over American immigration policy.

Guests:

Ted Robbins, NPR’s Southwest correspondent;

Bill Bennett, Spokesperson for the Minuteman Project;

Ray Barone, mayor of Douglas, Arizona, on the border with
Mexico;

Armando Navarro, Head of the National Alliance for Human Rights and Chair and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside;

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and regular contributor to the National Review Magazine;

Barbara Alvarez, President of California Landscape Contractors’ Association