About 750 volunteers have spent at least one eight-hour shift in the field, patrolling a 23-mile stretch of desert between Naco and Douglas, to try to stem the flow across the busiest illegal entry point on the Mexican border.
''In just 17 days, the Minuteman Project has successfully sealed the San Pedro River Valley border from illegal activity," Minuteman organizer Jim Gilchrist said on the project's website this week, halfway through the monthlong venture.
Gilchrist pointed to a drop in Border Patrol apprehensions in the area as proof: The agency caught about 2,500 illegal immigrants in the Naco area during the first half of the month; agents apprehended nearly 7,700 during the same period last year.
But Nicley and others attributed the drop to US agents and the increased presence of Mexican police and members of Grupo Beta, a Mexican government-sponsored organization that tries to discourage people from crossing illegally and aids those stranded in the desert. Authorities suggested that illegal immigrants are simply going around the Minutemen's lines.
''They are going west of Naco, but they are still trying," said Bertha de la Rosa, a coordinator with Grupo Beta.
The volunteers were recruited over the Internet. Some are armed, but they are under instructions not to detain anyone, but to report them to authorities.
