The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently announced that the 950 volunteers expected to take part next month in an Arizona border vigil against undocumented immigration will be monitored to ensure none of the aliens are abused.  The organization will have lawyers on standby ready to file civil cases against the volunteers.  The volunteers will be posted at 200-yard intervals a mile inside the border to observe undocumented aliens coming into the U.S. and report them to the U.S. Border Patrol, but is not to confront them.

The effort to voluntarily patrol the border is being referred to as the Minuteman Project, in which volunteers plan fan out across 23 miles of the San Pedro Valley to watch the border and report any illegal activity to federal agents -- an exercise some law enforcement authorities and others fear could lead to vigilante violence. Many volunteers were recruited over the Internet and some plan to be armed.