The wife of the man who led the so-called Minuteman movement -- aimed at protecting the US border with Mexico from immigrants -- says he once asked her to shoot him, threatened to shoot her family and said he would kill cops.

In seeking a protection order in April, Alena Simcox, 30, the third wife of onetime Minuteman chief Chris Simcox, alleged that she found her husband heavily drunk after she returned from a shopping trip last November. He had a gun, she said, and "repeatedly pointed it at me, saying he was going to kill me, and my kids, and the police."

She wrote of a six-hour ordeal in which she locked herself and her three kids in a bedroom until he passed out. She says she didn't call police because she was afraid it would inflame the situation.

"He was waiting by the door for the police to come, with a gun pointed at me," she wrote.

In a second alleged 2009 incident, his wife wrote, "On our wedding anniversary, he was drinking and angry. Got a revolver gun and loaded with kids present. Then proceeded to ask me to shoot him.' I said no,' so then he said he would shoot the entire family and cops."