Civilian border group looks north

''In the absence of the federal government doing its mandated duty to secure our borders, we will pick up the slack. Reluctantly," said Chris Simcox, a Minuteman co-organizer who also operates Civil Homeland Defense, another Arizona group that monitors illegal immigrants.

''We shouldn't have to be doing this," Simcox told reporters in Washington, where he was scheduled to meet with lawmakers tomorrow. ''But at this point, we will continue to grow this operation -- also to the northern border."

Simcox offered no timetable on when the Canadian border patrol -- to be organized in Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota, and Vermont -- might begin. He said he hoped to start patrols near San Diego, Calif., by June and along the rest of the Mexico border by October.

Mario Villarreal, a spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection, said his agency ''does not endorse the expansion of civilian patrols, as proposed by the citizens group in Arizona. We must leave the responsibility of protecting the nation's borders to the highly trained law enforcement personnel of the Border Patrol."

''We're not supportive of vigilantes," said Dan Whiting, spokesman for Senator Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho. ''We can empathize with the need for border security, but we need to do it the right way."

President Bush has said that he is opposed to ''vigilantes" and that the US Border Patrol should enforce border security.

Several hundred Minuteman volunteers, some of whom were armed, were not allowed to detain illegal border crossers spotted during their April patrol.

More than half of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants apprehended in the United States last year entered at the Mexico-Arizona border. Recent intelligence suggested Al Qaeda terrorists might enter at that point.

The US border along Canada is twice as long as the border along Mexico. Customs officials caught a man with explosives trying to enter Washington from Canada in December 1999 in what has become known as the millennium terrorist plot.

The Minuteman organizers estimated that it would take $4 billion and two years to secure the Mexico border, and $8 billion and three years on the Canada border. They urged use of National Guard troops to help patrol the borders.