If this is the new civil rights, Martin Luther King, Jr. must be turning over in his grave.

It's beyond outrageous.

Two miles from the border with Mexico, U.S. citizen Casey Nethercott's dream ranch is now the property of Edwin Alfredo Mancia Gonzales and Fatima del Socorro Leiva Medina, both illegal immigrants from El Salvador.

And Nethercott didn't sell it to them. They took it by force, after trespassing on it to sneak into the U.S. All orchestrated by Dees.

Dees' legal squad used American courts to put Nethercott in jail and transfer his property to the illegals he tried to keep out.

According to the New York Times, Nethercott bought the Arizona ranch, "Camp Thunderbird," in 2003 for $120,000, his entire savings. He used the 70-acre property as headquarters for Ranch Rescue, a group like (and connected with) the Minutemen, which tries to keep our borders safe--since our government will not.

In March 2003, Nethercott and Ranch Rescue caught Mancia and Leiva sneaking into the country on a ranch near the Texas border. Even Mancia and Leiva admit that the Ranch Rescue members gave them cookies, water, and a blanket, and let them go after an hour.

But they accused Nethercott of threatening them and hitting Mr. Mancia with a pistol. Instead of trying the illegals for trespassing and kicking them out, Texas prosecutors tried and convicted Nethercott of gun possession by a felon (he previously served time in California for assault), and he is now serving five years in a Texas prison.

It gets worse.

In prison for the gun possession charge, Nethercott was unable to defend himself against a civil lawsuit filed by Dees and his gangster mob of lawyers on behalf of the illegals who claimed post-traumatic stress for their hour of cookies and water.

Dees took Nethercott's ranch to pay the default judgment of $850,000 against Nethercott (in addition to $600,000 garnered against two other men).

Perhaps this column should really be called, "How to Get Rich Quick for Illegal Aliens."

It gets even worse.

Dees and his SPLC also tried to get Nethercott's $60,000 in bail money transferred to the illegal immigrants. It was money Nethercott's poor mother obtained by mortgaging her home in order to post bail. Dees' lawyer mob also went after Nethercott's sister, a nursing assistant.

And you thought it couldn't get any worse? Think again.

Without filing these charges, Mancia and Leiva, the illegal immigrants would have been deported. Instead they are living comfortably in our country and have applied for visas available to immigrants who are the victims of certain crimes and cooperate with authorities. Until then, they are here on a year-to-year basis, with the help of Dees' lawyer thugs, and the approval of our irresponsible government.

Dees' organization should be called the Southern Impoverishment Law Center because he and his legal hucksters are playing perverted Robin Hood--stealing money from loyal, little-guy Americans who want to protect our borders and giving it to unworthy illegal immigrants who break the law and shouldn't be here.

Then, there is Dees' misrepresentation of what his "Law" Center is all about. As co-founder and chief trial counsel, he presents his non-profit group as a small civil rights organization David battling hate by neo-Nazi Goliaths. But SPLC is a multi-million dollar bully of lower and lower-middle class Americans with little means to defend themselves. And these days, few of them are supremacists and racists. Most are patriots who fight the plague of illegal aliens.

Its fiscal year 2003 tax forms show the SPLC had nearly $153 million in assets. It spent almost $24 million dollars in the year ending October 31, 2004. Dees, unlike the endlessly charitable, little paid lawyer portrayed in the TV movie, collected almost $300,000 in income and benefits that same year. (He gave thousands in campaign contributions to John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democratic National Committee.) Other directors and officers of this gangster lawyer conglomerate all made over $100,000, most almost $200,000 or more.

SPLC spent over a million dollars annually on swanky lobbyists who pushed to make laws easier for SPLC to ruin Americans like Nethercott. SPLC spent more than $12 million dollars in grants and "teaching tolerance" to law enforcement, schools, teachers, and students. If Casey Nethercott's case is any example, SPLC's "tolerance" is unbarred acceptance of outrage.

When asked about the illegal immigration problem and pressed on the urgency of the Minutemen, Dees told MSNBC's Chris Matthews, "The INS may not be doing its job to suit everybody, but neither is the SEC. There are millions of Americans who lost their money to white boys on Wall Street." And one poor American man who is lost his life and his property to a White boy in Montgomery, Alabama, named Morris Dees.

SPLC's tax forms proclaims its purpose is "providing legal services for victims of civil rights injustice and hate crimes." But who are the real victims here? Casey Nethercott, his co-defendants, and his family. The injustice is that he is in jail and lost everything. But there was no hate crime here--unless you count the hate Morris Dees harnessed and led through the court system to screw Nethercott at the expense of illegal aliens who got cookies and water.

The moral of this story: Turnabout isn't always fair play.

When Morris Dees is involved, it's a travesty of justice. No wonder people hate lawyers.

***UPDATE: Predictably, I received an angry e-mail, today, from Morris Dees' Southern Poverty Law Center. A man named David Holthouse, identified as part of SPLC's "Intelligence Project," compared me to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels for "dehumanizing illegal immigrants." No, I think they're very human and a very big problem, and we should treat them accordingly, unlike their mob of gangster lawyers at SPLC. Given that my grandparents survived the Holocaust, while most of their families perished, I think it's a little absurd to compare wanting to protect our borders from foreign invasion (non-ethnic based, too) to the Nazis who sent 11 million people to their deaths in ovens and otherwise.

Holthouse sent me two photos of a man named Kalen Riddle, whom he claims was Nethercott's "former right hand man" at the "Camp Thunderbird" Ranch. The pictures of Riddle, who sports a swastika on his arm, are disturbing. Still, we are not in the business of prosecuting thought in America, using it to take property from people and give it to illegals. Nothing makes what SPLC did, right.

I have seen no evidence that Nethercott has any involvement in neo-Nazi groups, and he is apparently being smeared. Liberal groups like the ADL and SPLC used the presence of Riddle to sully the entire Ranch Rescue, Minutemen Project groups, and citizen border patrol groups, and Dees has vowed to go after them. But Ranch Rescue disavowed Nethercott when the Riddle connection came to light.

Holthouse, in his e-mail message to me, also attacked the Minutemen (for no reason) and wrote the gratuitous, "Hail victory Debbie. Have a white day." Thanks, but what I really want is what Ranch Rescue and the Minutemen want--safe, impenetrable borders. I guess Mr. Holthouse forgot about 9/11. I haven't.

Here is the website for Ranch Rescue. Clearly, it does not have the neo-Nazi goals SPLC and its Mr. Holthouse wish to ascribe to it. Ranch Rescue's Mission Statement clearly says otherwise, and frankly, I think Ranch Rescue should consider a defamation action against Holthouse and SPLC, since Holthouse claims that they are "deranged racists who, if they could have their way, would line you and all other descendants of Jews up against a wall right next to the illegal immigrants you call a 'plague' and shoot you dead--blond tresses or not."

The fact is, our borders are in a state of emergency, and someone must do the job. Seizing someone's ranch because he gave some illegals cookies and water and held them for an hour--even if he has a neo-Nazi associate whom I find disgusting--is not the way we should ever do things in America. His thought today, mine and yours tomorrow. It is interesting that these groups--who constantly fight for the free speech and civil liberties of their favored "minorities" (including radical Muslims)--disregard the thought and speech of those they disfavor, like the rest of us.