Minute Men Get Chased Out Of VT Town, Get Lost

[Nbadan]

NEWPORT, Vt. -- It's hard to save the United States from illegal immigrants when you can't find the border.

At noon yesterday, some volunteers in the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps were in this bucolic town in northern Vermont, trying to do both.

Eleven members of this citizens group had come to the Vermont-Canada border to patrol for illegal immigrants. They had intended to station themselves in Derby Line, a quaint village that straddles the border.

But these Minutemen were forced out of town by a larger crowd of protesters, who denounced their opposition to illegal immigration as a front for racism.

So the volunteers set off to watch a stretch of border on a bike path that runs along Lake Memphremagog.

Only they got lost.

Some of the men stood at a break in the path, which is crossed by the Canadian border close to where they stood. But the group's leader, Bob Casimiro of Weymouth, Mass., was not sure which way to send them.

He pointed down the path toward a footbridge. The Minutemen started walking.

''Stay within sight," he told them. Within minutes, they were out of sight.

more: Boston

Back on the bike path, the three Minutemen trudged on in the rain. Finally, they knocked on Amy Audet's door to ask directions.

The border, she told them, was in the opposite direction."

[Marcus Bryant]

Relevance?