TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - Members of the Ranch Rescue group and Cochise County residents are fuming over an official safety bulletin issued to U.S. immigration officials that characterized the volunteer group as racists capable of terrorism.

A top Border Patrol official in Tucson has also criticized the bulletin, which was issued last month by the Intelligence Analysis Branch at U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service headquarters in Washington.

It warned that members of "anti-immigration hate crime organizations" planned to meet in Douglas during the last weekend of October, and that their presence "may be a threat to illegal aliens and U.S. Border Patrol agents."

Ranch Rescue, a Texas-based group, had asked via the Internet for volunteers to come to Arizona this fall to help Cochise County ranchers repair property damaged by a two-year flood of illegal immigrants.

Tucson Sector Chief David Aguilar told The Arizona Daily Star that he did not believe a serious threat to agents or migrants existed at the time of the bulletin's release or at present.

"There is no way that members of the community should in any way be associated with the extremist groups and the hate groups mentioned in that bulletin," he said.

The report listed a series of groups including the Ku Klux Klan and concluded that their involvement would create an opportunity for violence.

The targets would mostly likely be illegal immigrants, but "a scenario where an act of violence against a U.S. Border Patrol agent, made to look as if an illegal alien committed it, could present itself in a favorable way to support these anti-immigration organizations and supremacy hate groups' cause," the bulletin said.

David Stoddard, a member of the Concerned Citizens of Cochise County, said he is outraged that citizens would be branded racist criminals for stating their opposition to illegal immigration.

"This is absolute B.S.," said Stoddard, a retired Border Patrol supervisor with 27 years in the service.