Anti-immigration vigilante loses lawsuit

BISBEE, Ariz., Nov. 23 (UPI) -- A jury in Arizona has awarded almost $100,000 to two Mexican-American hunters who claimed they were threatened by an anti-immigration activist.

The hunters said Roger Barnett, a rancher near the border, threatened them and two small children with an assault rifle and used racial epithets, The New York Times reported.

Barnett is the target of a number of other suits accusing him of harassment and illegal imprisonment of illegal immigrants. He claims to have detained 12,000 illegal aliens he caught crossing his land.

"The Barnetts, probably more than any people in this country, are responsible for the vigilante movement as it now exists," said Mark Potok, legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "They were the recipients of so much press coverage and they kept boasting, and it was out of those boasts that the modern vigilante movement sprang up."