XAVIER ZARAGOZA/The Daily Dispatch

Everyone has seen the new faces in town.

They wear white T-shirts with bold, red words that say "Legal Observer" in both Spanish and English.

But do you know what they do?

The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Friends Service Committee will be hosting a free dinner at the Sociedad Mutualista de Obreros Mexicanos building on 406 8th Street. There, the legal observers will inform the public about who they are and what they do.

The free dinner is at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 16.

The legal observers, who have been following the Minutemen volunteers and monitoring and video taping their actions, will present an update on their observing.

Ray Ybarra, a legal observer coordinator and a Douglas native, who has been working on vigilante issues in Douglas for 11 months, will give an update on the observing they have done for the first two weeks since April 1.

"It is important to extend an invitation to the community to let them know that there is a group monitoring the activities of the Minutemen to ensure that the rights of all people are respected and any abuses documented," Ybarra said.

Ybarra is a Stanford law student and an Ira Glassier Racial Justice Fellow for the ACLU in Arizona.

"This is an opportunity for the community to be involved in the movement to ensure that individuals who come to our community to engage in illegal activity will not be tolerated," he said.

Ybarra said that Douglas residents will be given the opportunity to train as legal observers or volunteer in the office. Others can participate by donating money or food.

More than 200 people have expressed interest in becoming legal observers, Ybarra said. They range from distinguished Phoenix-based civil rights attorneys, law students in California, international human rights observers and Cochise College students.

Legal observers, armed with video cameras and two-way radios, set up observation posts within 'watching range' of Minuteman activities and are ready to document any abuses.

The Minutemen volunteers are members of an anti-illegal immigration group that have gathered on the border to make a presence and stop illegal immigration

Saturday evening's dinner will feature a Douglas native, Phoenix attorney Antonio D. Bustamante, who will talk on the Hanigan case, the mid 1970s incident of three men who tortured three Mexican migrants outside of Douglas.

"Legal observers are putting themselves in a potentially dangerous situation to safeguard the rights and safety of others," said Caroline Isaacs, the executive director of the American Friends Service Committee in Tucson. "We feel that our presence has already had an impact in terms of deterring illegal behavior and that is why it is so important that we continue our activities through the month of April."

The Immigrants' Rights Project of the ACLU has sent two of its national staff to Arizona to support the legal observers.

"Under the Constitution, every person regardless of immigration status is entitled to due process, and private vigilantes are not permitted to take the law into their own hands," said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Right Project. "The Immigrants' Rights Project will participate in the legal observer project to assess the situation in Arizona firsthand, to support the efforts of the ACLU of Arizona and to underscore that the rule of the law applies equally to all."