Brian Mills News Channel 11 Jul 4, 9:03 PM EDT
<http://www.tricities.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=TRI%2FMGArticle%2FTRI_B asicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031783650391>
On this July 4th the Cigarroa family enjoys an American style cookout but with a distinctly Mexican flavor. More than a hundred thousand Hispanic immigrants already live in Tennessee. Many more are undocumented.
"In East Tennessee lot of people, we just don't know where everybody is at, but there is a lot of Hispanic people, and more and more are coming down this way", says Lucy Cigarroa.
Some long time residents find this trend disturbing.
"We've got too many, like I said in Erwin its full of them now", says Gerald Love.
And there is at least one group from Morristown who call themselves the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen. They want to take aim at this perceived invasion of illegal aliens and the people who employ them.
"They will go through em if they are really don't belong here then they will put em out I hope that's the way it works anyway", says Gerald Love.
Local Hispanics say the Tennessee Minutemen sound a lot like another group.
"Sounds like the Ku Klux Klan actually reminds me of something like that sounds like a lynch group", says Raul Huerta.
Local law enforcement are also concerned about the intentions of the Tennessee volunteer minutemen.
"They don't really have the authority to ask somebody if you are a citizen or not so I don't know how they are going to operate", says Sheriff Kent Harris.
News Channel Eleven tried to contact both the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen and the Arizona based Minutemen Project to ascertain their intentions for this area. We were not successful.
Meanwhile local Hispanics wait to see if this storm of controversy will blow over or continue to head this way. The Morristown Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen are led by a Carl Whitaker. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002.
This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm