The United States Border Patrol is now coordinating its efforts with armed, rightwing militia groups in its effort to enforce the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies, according to the New York Times and the Guardian.
Armed rightwing militia members detained a large group of migrants at the US-Mexico border and coordinated with US border patrol agents to have them arrested, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, in a series of actions the civil liberties organization called a “kidnapping” and a flagrant violation of the law.
The group of white, rightwing vigilantes—dubbing itself the United Constitutional Patriots, and operating in southern New Mexico—has been given tacit permission by U.S. Border Patrol agents to terrorize migrant families and hold them at gunpoint until agents arrive to “process” them.
Members of the group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, filmed several of their actions in recent days, including the detention this week of a group of about 200 migrants who had recently crossed the border near Sunland Park, N.M., with the intention of seeking asylum. They uploaded videos to social media of exhausted looking migrant families, blinking in the darkness in the glare of what appeared to be the militia’s spotlights.
The group’s Facebook “manifesto” is draped in the typical chest-pumping “freedom” bravado that’s characteristic of these organizations. As an added twist, these “Patriots” claim “protection” under 501(c) nonprofit status:
We are here to uphold the Constitution of The United States of America. We uphold this cause against all enemies both foreign and domestic which shall infringe upon the rights of the citizens given by the Constitution. We are here to serve in time of need at the local and state level and if necessary for our country.
According to the Guardian report, this Trump-inspired private army of racists approaches migrant families, threatens them with their automatic weapons, and then misrepresents itself as the Border Patrol, while it contacts the actual federal agency. In one video posted to Facebook, a spokesman for the group (pictured above) can be heard mirroring Donald Trump’s statements about migrants.
A video posted Monday night by Jim Benvie, a member of the armed group, appeared to show the militia ordering around a large group of migrants, including many children, and telling them to sit on the ground. As he filmed the migrants kneeling in the dirt, Benvie narrated on his video: “There’s no border patrol here. This is us.”
[...]
Benvie mirrored Trump’s anti-immigrant language in his videos, saying, “This is an invasion. Gotta build the wall.”
In another video posted Wednesday, Benvie filmed himself stopping a group of four adults and three children and said “border patrol” to them as he approached, before calling for another member of his group to join.
U.S. Border Patrol acknowledges that it is “aware” of such groups and does not “condone” them, but, as Benvie himself acknowledges in the Times article, agents do nothing to stop them and have never requested that they “stand down.” Instead, in accordance with Trump’s policy, they have focused their efforts on criminalizing and punishing anyone who makes an effort to provide aid to migrants, such as leaving caches of food and water at border crossing points.
The ACLU has requested that New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham investigate and stop what it characterizes as out-and-out kidnapping by these vigilantes.
“The Trump administration’s vile racism has emboldened white nationalists and fascists to flagrantly violate the law,” the ACLU of New Mexico said in a letter to the state’s governor and attorney general, urging them to “immediately investigate this atrocious and unlawful conduct”.
The ACLU described the group as “an armed fascist militia organization” made up of “vigilantes” working to “kidnap and detain people seeking asylum” and accused the group of directly making illegal arrests.
Thus far the response by Grisham has been to call the actions of the group “unacceptable,”although she has promised to take action.
The governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, said in a statement that it was “completely unacceptable” that migrant families “might be menaced or threatened in any way, shape or form when they arrive at our border.”
“It should go without saying that regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone,” she added."My office and our state police are coordinating with the Attorney General's Office and local police to determine what has gone on and what can be done."
Perhaps she fears what they would do if she tried to stop them.
The tolerance and acceptance extended by an arm of our taxpayer-funded U.S. government to an active, private paramilitary “militia,” whatever its pretenses, should set off serious alarm bells for anyone. The fact that these groups are motivated by racial animus is bad enough. The fact that, in their self-deluding rhetoric, they have taken it upon themselves to act as an arm of law enforcement is even more troubling. As the Guardian article points out, by forcibly restricting people’s movement under the threat of arms, they are already breaking established law.
The classic excuse that these militias and other gun fanatics use is the right to “defend” themselves. Fair enough. We all have a right to defend ourselves. But that right does not extend to acting as a private, unregulated police force, unanswerable to the public, that deliberately seeks out opportunities to threaten and arrest other people. When a group decides it can do that, and when the government looks away, we are crossing into very uncharted, very dangerous territory.
