PHOENIX — Michelle Dallacroce has 4,997 unread e-mails, is late to a meeting and needs to pick up her daughter from elementary school, but here she is, counting day laborers.
"Look, they're over there!" she says as she steers her Lexus SUV through her neighborhood. "That one's under the trees! My children have to see this." Her outrage rising, Dallacroce takes a detour, stopping at a retirement home to distribute fliers for her new group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens.
In contrast to the coordinated pro-immigration rallies across the country, hundreds of grass-roots activists such as Dallacroce are veering in different directions as they try to influence Congress to crack down on illegal immigration.
They are picketing Mexican consulates; they're building a barbed wire fence on the border and phoning lawmakers to protest legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S. They have sponsored anti-illegal immigrant initiatives in Colorado and Phoenix. In recent weeks, they have staged demonstrations in cities in the Midwest and Southwest that have drawn a couple of hundred protesters each.
Although they aren't turning out hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, activists say public sentiment is on their side.
"The people who are against illegal immigration tend not to be the people who march," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, which seeks tighter immigration restrictions. "They're the people who call their congressman, then show up to vote."
In Los Angeles, Bill King, a retired senior Border Patrol agent, started a political action committee in January to back candidates who are tough on illegal immigration. "As a citizen of this country, I am fed up with the inaction of this Congress and this president," King said. "I'm not a radical. All I want is for them to enforce the law."
Activists who take the toughest stance against illegal immigration have formed too many groups to count, and more seem to crop up every week. Many are run by only a handful of people, but count e-mail lists in the thousands. There's Mid-America Immigration Reform Coalition in Kansas City, Mo. Californians for Population Stabilization. Friends of the Border Patrol in Covina. Wake Up America Foundation in Las Vegas. Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. Northern Coloradans for Immigration Reduction. The American Resistance Foundation in Georgia.
