How ridiculous is our immigration policy? Grandmas are taking up arms to secure a border that our government won't defend. Grandmas.

The "Granny Brigade," Carmen Mercer and Connie Foust, sits silently in the pitch-black desert night at their Minuteman observation post just a few yards from the dirt road and four-strand barbed-wire fence that separates the United States and Mexico.

With the temperature dropping into the low 40s and the wind whipping across the high desert, they wrap their legs in warm blankets. As sector bosses for more than two dozen Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers on the night shift along what is known as the Naco line, the women, who have a combined eight grandchildren, scan the area with a night-vision scope.

Suddenly, a dozen black-clad illegal aliens, some wearing scarves over their faces, scurry out of Mexico, having crossed silently under a railroad trestle near a dirt road about a half-mile south of the border -- using the rugged terrain and the area's brushy mesquite trees as cover.

"They were on us before we knew it," said Mrs. Mercer, a petite woman with a large .38-caliber revolver strapped to her hip. "They couldn't have been more than 10 feet from us, and we were looking right at them.

"We dropped to the ground, and I don't think they saw us," she said, gesturing with her arms as she relived the moment. "We whispered into the radio to report their position, hoping someone would hear us. It was very scary, but that's what we came out here to do."

The women's call had been heard by their Minuteman colleagues and several of the illegals later were rounded up by the U.S. Border Patrol, which responded after being called by the volunteers.

One of the grannies hits the proverbial nail on the head.

Mrs. Mercer who is divorced, met and married a U.S. serviceman stationed in her native Germany in 1979, later coming with him to the United States and becoming a U.S. citizen. She said the U.S. government's inability to keep massive numbers of illegal aliens out of the country is unfair to those legal immigrants who spend years trying to become U.S. citizens.

"I love America and all that it stands for," she said. "For those of us who stood in line and waited to become a part of this great country, it is unfair that others can ignore the process and the government doesn't seem to care."

Indeed. Read the rest.