Donald Trump’s stunt politicizing the National Guard has one mission, and it’s not to secure the border—it’s to secure his racist base. Judging from the reactions from hate groups like Stormfront and the neo-Nazis from Daily Stormer, they loved it. In fact, Trump and these hatemongers continue to have a lot in common, because their agenda to attack and demonize a group of mostly Central American mom and kids seeking asylum in Mexico and the U.S. is one and the same:
When news broke of a “caravan” of peaceful Central American migrants marching toward Mexico and the United States, anti-immigrant activists and hate groups went on high alert and began a concerted effort to demonize the marchers and harass the organizers. President Trump quickly displaced his Easter Sunday message with a string of attacks on the migrants, who are seeking political asylum as they flee persecution and human rights violations in their countries of origin.
Trump proceeded to use that Easter Sunday to attack these families by falsely claiming that ”these big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA,” that the border was "getting more dangerous, 'caravans' coming," (more lies) and that "Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough [immigration] laws,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). His base, including leaders from the deadly Charlottesville protests, heard the intended messages loud and clear:
Also on Saturday, the neo-Nazi Website, Daily Stormer, warned of "Brown Hordes on the Move," and provided a phone number urging readers to call the White House. After Trump's tweets, the Daily Stormer posted a follow-up article on Sunday arguing that the president "has at least heard us."
But even more worrisome is that Trump’s call is leading to potential violence. “The notorious hate site Stormfront warned of ‘an avalanche of mud’ heading for the U.S. border. As one poster on the neo-Nazi forum put it, ‘We should exercise our second amendment rights and meet them at the border, guns in hand.’”
According to SPLC, Trump’s deployment of the National Guard has been “to the glee of the anti-immigrant movement,” riling up anti-immigrant activists and border vigilantes, including a former Minutemen leader. Some are planning protests along the border and could become dangerous, immigrant and civil rights groups warned in a letter, where they had called on California Gov. Jerry Brown to not agree to deploy the National Guard. The groups are right—these border vigilantes have killed before:
Shortly after midnight on May 30, 2009, [Shawna] Forde and a group of three men invaded the home of a small-time marijuana smuggler named Raul “Junior” Flores in rural Arivaca, Ariz., and shot its three occupants: Flores, his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia, and his wife, Gina Gonzalez. However, Gonzalez was not fatally wounded and, after playing dead, she drove the gang from her home in a hail of gunfire that lightly wounded the chief gunman, a white supremacist serial killer from Washington state named Jason Eugene Bush.
The day after the murders, Forde posted on the Minutemen Project website, boasting of having “boots on the ground” in Arizona, and citing the deaths at the Flores home as part of a fundraising pitch, in Forde’s inimitable semi-literate style: “A American family was murdered 2 days ago including a 9 year old girl. Territory issue’s are now spilling over like fire on the US side and leaving Americans so afraid they will not even allow their names to be printed in any press releases.”
Other anti-immigrant activists are harkening back to the Murrieta protests in 2014, when busses carrying Central American women and children were confronted by ugly, hateful protests. However, “the 2018 caravan,” the immigrant and civil rights group warn, “has received attention from hardcore elements of the far-right that are much more prone to violence than those who protested four years ago. Public statements from governors and attorneys general denouncing vigilante violence could help dissuade these elements and avoid tragedy.”
But, after several days of silence, Gov. Brown agreed to send 400 National Guard troops after all—Trump praised the move in a tweet—in a proposed agreement that “emphasizes the widely shared understanding of the Guard's limited role but explicitly bans any support of immigration enforcement”:
Brown cast his decision as a welcome infusion of federal support to fight transnational criminal gangs and drug and firearms smugglers.
"Combating these criminal threats are priorities for all Americans - Republicans and Democrats," Brown wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
But that’s already the job of the federal government. At the very least, Gov. Brown and other governors and state leaders should listen to the immigrant and civil rights groups and “make a public statement condemning any vigilante violence”—before any happens—“at or near the border and upholding shared values of inclusion.” Vulnerable lives and families could depend on it.