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Minutemen sued over donation for border fence
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A Fountain Hills man who mortgaged his home to help pay for a secure fence along a portion of the U.S-Mexico border is suing the Minuteman border watch organization and many of its leaders, who are building the fence.
Jim Campbell says there is no “Israeli-style” fence after he donated $100,000 to the project.
Now, claiming fraud and breach of contract, he is seeking a judgment of more than $1.2 million, plus the return of his donation.
In addition to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the lawsuit lists three conservative consultants and charities as defendants. The suit, filed last week in Maricopa County Superior Court, was first reported in The Sierra Vista Herald.
Neither Campbell nor the Minuteman group returned messages seeking comment.
Minuteman president Chris Simcox told the Herald that Campbell’s donation had resulted in the erection of a steel framework, but low funding has halted construction.
“His $100,000 is sitting out there,” Simcox said. “We’ve showed good faith.”
In the suit, Campbell, an Air Force veteran, said he was intrigued by a spring 2006 announcement the group was planning to build a multilayered fence consisting of concertina wire, motion-detecting cameras and anti-vehicle ditches along 10 miles of private land in Cochise County.
Campbell’s donation was to be used to purchase structural pipes, he said.
But Campbell said at the May 27, 2006, groundbreaking that the members began construction of a “flimsy” fence. Campbell told the group he wanted his money back, only to have Simcox assure him the border fence project would go forward as planned.
Yet the group diverted his money, Campbell said, and “as a direct and proximate result of this diversion, the nine-tenths of fence under construction has languished” in a state of inactivity, the lawsuit states.
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