Trigger happy," Goliad County, Texas, Sheriff Robert DeLaGarza thought to himself. It was early July and DeLaGarza was meeting with members of the Texas Minuteman Corps, a new vigilante border patrol outfit that started recruiting in DeLaGarza's county in June.

"They kept talking a lot about shooting illegals, and what they could and couldn't do to make it self-defense of life or property," DeLaGarza said. "One woman kept asking, 'Well, what if they reach for a rock, can we shoot them then? What if they're on private land? Can we shoot them for trespassing?'"

Later that month in California, two Mexicans were wounded in separate shootings the same night along a 14-mile stretch of the border between Campo and Tecate, Calif., that was being patrolled by the California Minutemen, another new vigilante border patrol group.