Minutemen end vigil, claim success:

    Volunteers recruited over the Internet to monitor illegal entrant activity along a stretch of Arizona's border ended their monthlong efforts Saturday as they began - peering through binoculars along a dusty border road.

    Members of the Minuteman Project hailed results as a huge success, and organizers plan to expand the mission to the other states bordering Mexico, as well as to parts of the Canadian border - in Idaho, North Dakota, Vermont and Michigan. They also plan to take on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

    "This could not have been done without all of you. You did this together - you the people," co-organizer Chris Simcox told some 150 Minutemen and supporters at a last-day meeting outside a church in Palominas.

    Simcox said the project has inspired millions of supporters across the country and reiterated a message he delivered to congressmen last week in Washington: The people will lead themselves "in an effort to secure our borders, to protect our families, our children, our neighbors and our way of life."

    Founder Jim Gilchrist said the Minutemen had gained the attention of Congress but warned that unless the work continues, "it's going to be viewed as just a monthlong dog and pony show."

    The Minutemen said volunteers' calls to the Border Patrol resulted in 335 apprehensions of illegal immigrants through early Wednesday. Organizers said 876 volunteers went through a four-hour training session and spent at least one eight-hour shift in the field through Friday. Their final eight-hour shift was to end as of 6 a.m. today.

    The Border Patrol keeps statistics on citizen calls and resulting apprehensions, but did not publicly break down whether calls came from project volunteers.

    Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants the Border Patrol apprehended last year, more than half entered the country through the Mexico-Arizona border, and its porousness has become a focus of contention over possible intelligence reports that al-Qaida terror operatives could enter the same way.

    Critics, including Border Patrol officials, have said the Minutemen were little more than a nuisance and distraction that attracted significant attention from the media and from civil rights groups watching volunteers for possible rights violations.

    But a majority of registered Arizona voters polled said they favored what the Minutemen did.

    Trucker Mike Minatrea, 39, of New Braunfels, Texas, a ham radio operator who was stationed near Naco for a week with his wife, Kristi, a registered nurse, said the Minuteman Project "has told the rest of America what they can do to get something done" by protesting in a calm, orderly and productive fashion.