Answer me this.

[Doc]

Mexican drug runners in military garb shooting at persons too close to their infiltration/defiltration routes.  Are you referring to San Diego CA, or San Diego,  TX?  San Diego, TX is out near Alice, TX, which is not all that far from where Dick Cheney went lawyer hunting with the wrong shotgun load a while back.  ;) 

BS.  Presence calls for such an armed posture, see the majority of UN peacekeeping missions.  See police on patrol.  Guns carried, not generally used.

And they have been given a strict RoE.  You note that the rule is "you screw up, we send you home." 

Your cynical opinion, which I will add to your category of "Bollocks."  However, the risk is pressent that someone will violate the RoE.  No question.  It can happen, humans are their imperfect selves.
Also to avoid unintentional confrontations with federal and state park rangers, who look out for the usual armed drug runners and other leakers in parks as part of their expanded duties.

That is a standard military RoE method with which I am most familiar: fire only if fired upon.  It is used by the UN in every peacekeeping operation with which I am familiar.

You and others in this conversation are ignoring "presence."  Jahcs' comment on "liability versus operational" intents may be close to the truth, due to the LULAC challenges and other carping by Mexicana Irredenta factions within our borders. 

There is both a political and a functional purpose to the quoted policy.  Politically, it is to preserve legitimacy.  The theme is the "neighborhood watch" method for assisting official law enforcement, which vigilante action does not do.  Vigilantism exacerbates law enforcement's problem, which the Minutemen do not wish to do.

Quite a few Minutemen patrol in private aircraft, sort of like the Civil Air Patrol.  It is not all boots on the ground surveillance of a porous border.  If they had UAV's --there are a variety of small, hand launched UAV's that would suffice for local patrol missions -- their efforts would be more effective, so long as those UAV's do not come into conflict with DEA, and Border Patrol, and Customs airborne border surveillance that the current official operational method.

Occhi
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Your wisdom and insight on the situation is appreciated. Thank you.

San Diego cali by the way. I thought I said Cali, but might have missed it. I am not quite as sharp as I once was on detail.

And I do know about the aircraft actually. I was listening to some guy on the radio talking about why they should approve grants to buy fuel and maintainance to keep these planes in the air. He made a lot of sense, about how it was cheaper to spend the grand money on private air craft than having to spend money for government air craft because of all the over spending and the price that Uncle Sham pays for parts and such. A citizens eye in the sky program seems like it would be cheaper to fund, if only partially.

They found a small notebook filled with Arabic near the border a few weeks ago. It was detailed information on how to make simple bombs for very little money once you enter America.