Nativists fan flames of U.S. immigration debate

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061224/lf_nm/usa_immigration_nativists_general_featue_dc

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Reaching into the back of a truck, U.S. anti-immigration activist Don Pauly grabs a Mexican flag, a can of lighter fuel and an aluminum baking tray and heads to the curbside outside the Mexican consulate.

As a small group of police officers, protesters and puzzled bystanders look on, he douses the green, red and white flag with fuel and spits on it for good measure, while an eye-patch wearing accomplice strikes a match. snip

The wilder fringe stretches from activists who burn Mexican flags -- like Pauly and his eye patch-wearing companion Laine Lawless -- to brutal thugs like a Texan teenager sentenced to 90 years in jail in December for sodomizing a Hispanic youth with a pole.

"We have seen an explosion of these groups, a real prairie fire that has spread across the country in quite an amazing way," said Mark Potok, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's intelligence project, which has tracked their rise.

"What's really amazing ... is how vicious this movement has become," he added.