By Mary Lee Grant
Falfurrias — Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes (click here) have heard a call to arms in President Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border.
“We’ll observe and report, and offer aid in any way we can,” said Shannon McGauley, a bail bondsman in the Dallas suburbs who is president of the Texas Minutemen. McGauley said he was preparing to head for the Rio Grande in coming days.
“We’ve proved ourselves before, and we’ll prove ourselves again,” he said.
McGauley and others have been roused by the president’s call to restore order and defend the country against what Trump has called “an invasion,” as thousands of Central American migrants advance slowly through southern Mexico toward the U.S. border. Trump has insisted that “unknown Middle Easterners,” “very tough fighters,” and large numbers of violent criminals are traveling among the women, children and families heading north on foot....
This level of vigilantism has never been witnessed before. Two of the gun-toting enthusiasts willing to kill come from Texas, "The Minuteman Project." and "Texas Minutemen." They are organized under the guise of re-establishing the past when the USA's military was created under the 2nd Amendment by armed citizens. No such homegrown militia is sanctioned under USA law. The USA military has replaced such militias a long time ago.
I fully expect Governors to live up to their responsibility and disband these groups.
November 7, 2018This level of vigilantism has never been witnessed before. Two of the gun-toting enthusiasts willing to kill come from Texas, "The Minuteman Project." and "Texas Minutemen." They are organized under the guise of re-establishing the past when the USA's military was created under the 2nd Amendment by armed citizens. No such homegrown militia is sanctioned under USA law. The USA military has replaced such militias a long time ago.
I fully expect Governors to live up to their responsibility and disband these groups.
By Mary McCord
After President Trump's pledge (click here) to send up to 15,000 US troops to the border to help deal with the approaching caravan of Central American migrants, private militias have called for their members to travel to the border to support the troops and US Customs and Border Patrol agents....
...The governors of the border states do not have to sit idly by while groups like the Minutemen deploy to the border with high-powered assault rifles, aerial drones, and night-vision goggles. These governors have legal tools in their arsenal to prevent this. Every state that borders Mexico, including Texas (and 48 of all 50 states), has a provision in its state constitution that requires the military to be at all times subordinate to the civil authority. That means private, unregulated and unauthorized militias -- operating wholly outside public accountability -- are prohibited by state law. In addition, both Texas and Arizona have criminal statutes barring private armed militias, while California and New Mexico ban private paramilitary activity....
And besides the danger these militias pose to citizens and USA military personnel, it would seem as though they are suspected to be potential thieves.
October 31, 2018
By Tara Copp
The 5,200 troops mobilizing (click here) to the U.S. southern border are headed there to deter a caravan of migrants, but some of the direct threats they are preparing for are homegrown, according to documents obtained by Military Times.
In those documents, the military is concerned about the already dangerous drug cartels that operate with impunity on both sides of the border, armed U.S. citizens taking the law into their own hands — or pilfering their gear — and far-right or far-left protesters inciting violence.
The deployment was ordered by President Donald Trump to counter a caravan of thousands of migrants who are traveling primarily by foot and aren’t expected to reach the U.S. border for weeks. The president has ratcheted up the potential threat posed by the caravan, tweeting that the caravan potentially contains terrorists, gang members and other threats....
November 15, 2018
By Nick R. Martin
...Johnny Horton Jr. (click here) is a self-proclaimed border militia leader who believes the rumors are true. Except he doesn’t call them rumors. He calls them facts. And like several other militia leaders, he says he has fielded a team of “patriots” to travel to the southern border to stop the caravan from coming into the U.S.
“Our information comes from the very top,” Horton said in a recent interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). “I’m not telling you where, but it comes out of very high agencies.”
Militia leaders like Horton have been hyping up the threat of the caravan in recent weeks and vowing online to take action. They say they’re putting “boots on the ground” from Texas to California to support the active-duty troops that have been ordered to the border in response to the caravan....
November 4, 2018
By Aaron Mesh
As President Donald Trump (click here) stokes fears about a migrant caravan heading to the United States, right-wing militia groups claim they are traveling south to defend the border.
A Washington Post report today says the militia members include Oregonians.
Shannon McGauley, a bail bondsman from outside Dallas, Tex., told the Post that he is organizing an armed militia group of at least 100 people to guard the border from the caravan.
"I can't put a number on it," McGauley he told the Post. "My phone's been ringing nonstop for the last seven days. You got other militias, and husbands and wives, people coming from Oregon, Indiana. We've even got two from Canada."
The caravan, made up of Central American migrants fleeing political persecution or poverty, is currently traveling through Mexico. The president, who regularly traffics in anti-immigrant paranoia, has painted this group as a threat to national security in advance of Tuesday's election.
It's not clear how many Oregonians, if any, are in fact joining McGauly's group. But on Oct. 26, an Oregon woman named Monica Marin told the Associated Press she had raised $4,000 to help militias buy supplies....
October 31, 2018
By Rafi Schwartz
It’s probably a pretty bad sign (click here) when a government warning about armed militias rolling out to the U.S.-Mexico border manages to fly largely under the radar for days, due to the sheer volume of other incredibly bad shit going on elsewhere in the country.
That, however, seems to be exactly what’s happened, with a Customs and Border Patrol warning issued last week reportedly telling Texas landowners to expect “possible armed civilians” on their property in response to a Central American caravan of asylum seekers—many of them women and children—currently working its way through southern Mexico en route to the United States.
According to the AP, multiple militia members plan to bring guns and other tactical equipment in an effort to to augment the actual border patrol agents already stationed along the border. “They’re just laughing in our face,” Texas Minutemen president Shannon McGauley told the AP. “It’s a free-for-all in America.”
McGauley estimated to the AP that, beyond an unspecified number of militia members already patrolling portions of the border, he expects to add “25 to 100 more” in the coming days....
These gun toting idiots have nothing more to do with their time then harass migrants seeking asylum. They call the migrants, "migs."
November 20, 2018
By Andrea Castillo
Robert Crooks (click here) is up before sunrise on a hill he calls “Patriot Point,” walkie-talkie in hand and loaded semiautomatic handgun holstered on his right hip.
To protect himself, he wears a vest padded with National Geographic magazines — including one celebrating great white sharks.
Directly in front of him is a border wall made of steel landing mats left over from the Vietnam War. Just a few hundred feet from the Mexican border, Crooks scans the landscape for any sign of an immigrant trying to cross into the United States.
A Las Vegas resident, Crooks heads the Mountain Minutemen. Along with other militia members in Texas, his group has been gearing up as thousands of migrants from Central America steadily make their way to the U.S. border to ask for asylum....
...Crooks, a 68-year-old retired commercial fisherman wearing a camouflage Trump hat, said the military presence was not enough and that the entire border should be shut down.
“This is a national emergency,” he said....
...Farther east, Harry Hughes, 55, of the U.S. Border Guard militia in Arizona said he’s not anticipating caravan migrants will attempt crossing the border 65 miles south of his home. Terrain in that rural stretch of the desert is particularly rough, said Hughes, who is also a leader of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement.
Shannon McGauley, 54, leads the Texas Minutemen. The bail bond agent from the Dallas suburbs left the border on Monday after three weeks.
He said a dozen members of his group have been patrolling an area just east of McAllen, Texas, and claimed to have 100 volunteers on standby. He plans to be back next week.
McGauley believes the attention in Tijuana is just a diversion and that migrants will soon begin attempting to cross the border in Texas.
“We don’t really want the full force until we’re sure when the caravan is going to arrive,” he said....
...The Minutemen have nicknames for each other and speak in code. Crooks is known as “Little Dog” for the way he keeps on the trail of migrants until border agents arrive to detain them. His associates didn’t want to be interviewed, saying they were afraid they could lose their regular jobs.
Several men were positioned atop other hills along the one-mile radius they patrol. They have dubbed the hills Donut Hole, Zoners and Couch Trail.
A call came in on Crooks’ walkie-talkie.
“Little Dog, this is Weasel, do you copy?”
“Yo, Weasel, what’s happening?”
“You’ve got an Omaha coming your way. I can see him.”
A black Border Patrol helicopter flew overhead. Crooks raised his hand to his temple in a salute.
“The Border Patrol does fantastic work,” he said. “There’s just not enough of them. We’re getting hammered.”
Crooks said he thinks the migrants shouldn’t turn down the Mexican government’s offer for refuge.
A member of the Minutemen since 2005, Crooks insists he has been shot at, attacked and even poisoned while guarding his country from people he calls “cockroaches.”
“That’s the pit of evil,” he said, looking just across the border. “I’ve heard blood-curdling screams from over there. Heroin, cocaine, bodies, child slavery, human trafficking. And it’s been like this for a long time.”
Crooks said his wife wants him home for Thanksgiving but that if activity starts to pick up, he’s not leaving. And if he does, he’ll be right back in no time.
That is just about as sad as it gets. They have no trust in the Border Patrol or the USA mlitary when backing up the Border Patrol. They have no purpose in their lives, except, to fear for the sake of fear. They need to put their guns away forever and go home to be good husbands and fathers, neighbors and citizens.
These militias need to take a trip across the USA - Mexican border to offer to help those migrants in Tijuana with obtaining food, water, sanitation and shelter.
I would suggest they go to the Northern Triad to realize why there are migrants to the USA border, but, the militias would not survive the violence the migrants left behind and hope to leave behind forever.
