Yesterday, McHenry County Blog began a series to de-mythologize what folks hear when they attend an Illinois Minuteman Project seminar.
You will remember that McHenry County College President Walt Packard told Minuteman attorney Suzanne Walters that he knew what the Minutemen were all about. That we incite violence. Packard was asked how he knew that was told he went to Google.
I took notes furiously last Friday night, stopping only to take pictures.
There was plenty of frustration with the lack of enforcement of immigration laws, but no violence was suggested.
Sheriff Daniel Beck began with his political background, how he fought Republican corruption in his courthouse.
Next, he talked about his community and his motivation to get involved with the illegal alien problem.
Demographically, Lima has “two-thirds of it housing below standards of what is acceptable.”
Allen County is about the size that McHenry County was when I was elected to the General Assembly in 1972—104,000 people. It’s Ohio’s 14th largest county.
Beck guessed that two percent of his county’s population were illegal aliens, 2,000 to 4,000 from Mexico, 75% illegal.
“Everything around us is rural. Everybody comes to Lima to shop.”
His department has 191 employees and a $9½ million budget.
Beck also pointed out that Lima is the drug-dealing center in his part of the state.
“If you want drugs, you come to Lima to get it. If you want prostitution, you come to Lima to get it.”
Then, Beck told of what inspired him to get involved with the illegal alien issue:
One of his young deputies stopped to help a van along a rural road. My notes are not complete, but I believe four people were in the vehicle.
“Three were illegal. They wrestled him down, took his guy and shot him in the back of the head. They put him back in his car and pushed it over the hill.
“They thought they could get away with it. We caught them in about three months.”
Beck was holding back tears as he was telling this story.
Clearly, his motivation was personal.
Part 3 tomorrow – the Rule of Law.