The Minuteman Project is an organization which was founded in the United States in August 2004 by a group of private individuals who sought to extrajudicially monitor the United States–Mexico border's flow of illegal immigrants. Founded by Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, the organization's name is derived from the name of the Minutemen, militiamen who fought in the American Revolution. The Minuteman Project describes itself as "a citizens' Neighborhood Watch on our border", and it has attracted the attention of the media due to its focus on the issue of illegal immigration. In addition to border watching, the Minuteman Project created a political action committee which lobbied for representatives who supported proactive immigration law enforcement and focused on resolving border security issues. Members of the Minuteman Project believe that government officials have failed to protect the country from the threat of invasion by foreign enemies. They strongly support building a wall and placing additional border patrol agents or military personnel on the Mexico–United States border to curb free movement across it. Roughly half of the Minuteman Project's members strongly oppose amnesty as well as a guest worker program, and an overwhelming number of them oppose sending funds to Mexico to pay for the improvement of its infrastructure. History First border watch In early 2005, Gilchrist and Simcox rallied over 1,200 volunteers to carry out the first border watch. For one month, activists guarded the 23-mile long stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border, kept count of the number of migrants who approached it, reported their presence, and prevented them from crossing it by scaring them away. Many of the activists came from Utah, and soon afterward, they joined forces with local groups to form the Utah Minuteman Project (UMP), which focused on raising public awareness with regard to the "threat of immigration" through local media and public debates. T-shirt incident On April 6, 2005, three Minuteman Project volunteers convinced a 25-year-old immigrant to hold a T-shirt and pose for a photograph and a video with one of the volunteers. The T‑shirt, which was also worn by volunteer Bryan Barton, read "Bryan Barton caught me crossing the border and all I got was this lousy T-shirt". The volunteer approached the young man near a main highway while he was off duty from patrolling. He then contacted the Border Patrol. He gave $20 to the man as the U.S. Border Patrol arrived and took