PALOMINAS - More than 40 people turned out Saturday for the Patriots' Border Alliance's kickoff rally of a month-long effort intended to "help stop the flow of illegal immigration into our sovereign nation."

"Operation: Allied Minutemen" will run through October. The mission is to coordinate and organize different Minuteman groups in Palominas and work together to spot and report illegal activity to the U.S. Border Patrol.

"Also, we will work to shut down this heavily trafficked area by maintaining a minuteman presence across the Huachuca Mountain regions and areas near our border," the group says in a press release.

Participants came to the event from places such as California, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Indiana, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Massachusetts, South Dakota and Oregon.

Volunteers headed to posts at 4 p.m. Saturday. Some of them will travel on all-terrain vehicles and horses. Resources will be available to assist them, including radios, an airplane and a special camera that can see an individual at five miles.

Glenn Spencer, president of American Border Patrol, a nonprofit border-watch group, emphasized the importance of raising awareness by getting images of people illegally crossing the border and putting them on the Internet.

Opponents of the effort say similar operations in the past have done little more than get publicity.

During the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps' last monthlong operation, immigrants had been warned and didn't cross the border, said Peter Young of Citizens for Border Solutions, a Bisbee group that is part of the No More Deaths Coalition.

"The (U.S.) Border Patrol doesn't like the Minutemen. They find it just causes chaos and confusion on the border. They would much rather not have people meddling like that," he said during an interview last week. "The whole concept of people being armed also frightens everybody. Presumably, they are armed."

Spencer told people in attendance at the rally that the country has a culture that is worth defending. He stressed the need to continue to demand the U.S. government meets its duty to protect the border.

"We are not here because we hate Mexicans. We are not here because we are racists," he said. "We are here because we love the United States of America."

Bob Wright, chairman of the board of directors of the Patriots' Border Alliance, said Americans enjoy a birthright. But, he said, it seems that birthright is for sale to people who want cheap labor and people who want a population that does as it is told.

He said the Minuteman effort has re-established participatory government in the United States.

Wright pointed out that over the course of history significant change has never been caused by the majority.

"Political justice is always brought about by the few dedicated fanatics, and that's what we have to be. We have to fight this fight every day of our lives. We have to fight it not only here on the border, but we have to fight it in our hometowns, we have to fight it in city councils, and some of us have to fight it in our churches," he said.