The U.S.-Mexican War ended after two years, in 1848, costing Mexico nearly half its territory and giving the United States incredible riches that came with the land spanning from Texas to California. At many points along the border, tension between Anglos and Mexicans has simmered ever since. Some would argue that the U.S. border policy with Mexico has been dysfunctional for nearly as long.

On the one hand, the U.S. agriculture industry and other sectors of the economy rely heavily on migrant Mexican workers and offer lucrative reasons to cross the border illegally; on the other, U.S. law subjects those who are caught crossing to arrest and deportation. With such a contradictory border policy, and with enforcement stretched impossibly thin along the desert frontier ranging from Texas to the Pacific, people can interpret the law in whatever way suits their interests.

But in the expanse of Cochise County, which abuts the vast and treacherous beauty of the Sonoran desert, the failure of such policy has become vivid in the past decade.

The vigilante culture here is, in many ways, just a side effect of Operation Gatekeeper, a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service campaign that literally walled off U.S. border cities like San Diego and El Paso from Mexico. Migrants on their way north to jobs in the fields or to reunite with families were forced either to stay home or to venture into more remote, rugged terrain along the border with Arizona. Hundreds of them have been found dead over the years, having succumbed to thirst, hunger or overexposure. For many Cochise County property owners, Gatekeeper meant daily encounters with dozens of immigrants crossing their land, often leaving trash in their wake while accompanied by the ruthless and violent coyotes who were hired as their guides and safekeepers.

The resulting anger gave rise to vigilante efforts led by part-time rancher Roger Barnett -- who has placed thousands of undocumented migrants under so-called citizen's arrest -- and refined by Glenn Spencer, who last year founded the high-tech militia American Border Patrol. Simcox is the latest to take up the cause, but clearly, all three men and many of their followers have taken inspiration and aid from John Tanton, a man known as the godfather of the modern anti-immigration movement.

Before founding the Federation for American Immigration Reform -- better known as FAIR -- in 1979, Tanton was best known for his environmental work as national director for the Sierra Club's population committee. His belief that population growth posed a dire risk to the environment led into the realm of anti-immigration activism; in Tanton's mind, poor immigrants reproduce at a greater rate than citizens of the United States and other Western countries who are more affluent and more highly educated. The Southern Poverty Law Center has extensively researched Tanton's connections to the anti-immigration movement and white supremacist groups, and in an investigative report last year, the center published a Tanton quote from 1975 that still provides critical insight into his thinking. "Their [Third World] 'huddled masses' cast longing eyes on the apparent riches of the industrial West," Tanton wrote then. "The developed countries lie directly in the path of a great storm."

That same year, French novelist Jean Raspail's racist "Camp of the Saints" was published in English, and it quickly became one of Tanton's favorite books. Raspail's polemic novel portrays the invasion of Europe by hordes of sex-crazed Africans, dirty Arabs, and "Hindus" who enslave white women on sex farms. Raspail urges the reader to "repulse the invasion and destroy the invader. Assuming, that is, that we are willing to murder -- with or without regret -- a million helpless wretches."

Today Tanton's publishing company, the Social Contract Press, is the sole publisher of "Camp of the Saints," billed as "the controversial, politically incorrect novel" on its Web site. Compared with most of Tanton's other creations, the Social Contract Press is probably the most stridently nativist. Other Tanton-founded groups like U.S. English, which mobilized opposition to bilingual education programs, and the Center for Immigration Studies, a pseudo-think tank that claims impartiality, have employed respected figureheads like former Reagan aide Linda Chavez to project a moderate, rational tone for their arguments against immigration.

When discussing immigration as a phenomenon, Tanton's style is usually dry and pedantic. But on a few occasions, he has openly expressed his contempt. In 1988, when Tanton's private "Council of Wise Men" memos were leaked to the press, a bitter white-nationalist philosophy cracked through the façade. "As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night?" Tanton wrote. "Can homo contraceptivus compete with homo progenitiva if borders aren't controlled? ... Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down." This revelation prompted the resignations of Chavez as U.S. English's president and Walter Cronkite from its board.

After the scandal, Tanton resigned as FAIR's executive director and focused on developing another project, US Inc., which is essentially a financial umbrella group for his network. He remained on FAIR's board of directors, and the group continued to court controversy. According to Form 990 returns filed with the IRS for 1988 to 1994, FAIR received nearly $1.3 million from the Pioneer Fund, which issues grants for research to prove Hitlerian notions of the biological superiority of the white race. And in 2001, Tanton-founded groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, NumbersUSA, US Inc., and FAIR were granted a total of $220,000 by eccentric rightist billionaire Cordelia Scaife-May of the Scaife Family Foundation.

Tanton did not respond to a message requesting an interview. FAIR's assistant director, David Ray, in an interview with Salon, bristled at questions about the Pioneer Fund, describing the donations as "insignificant." He also called "insignificant" any "financial or strategic information" FAIR has provided to Simcox, Spencer and Barnett. According to Form 990 returns, FAIR and Tanton's US Inc. donated $50,050 between 1998 and 2001 to Spencer's American Patrol and Voices of Citizens Together (American Border Patrol's political wings).

Were the Red Rock murders were committed by vigilantes? That's "just speculation," Ray replied. But don't Simcox, Barnett and Spencer raise the risk of anti-immigrant violence when they act independent of the law to mete out justice? "The onus is simply on the federal government to regain control of the borders," Ray said. "If they fail to do that and it goes on year after year, what we're going to see is increasing numbers of citizens speaking out against out-of-control immigration and defending their property."

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