Since its beginnings in the early 2000s, the vigilante border-militia movement has been driven by conspiracy theories, its leading figures all conspiracists of various stripes: American Patrol founder Glenn Spencer claimed immigration was part of a globalist “Reconquista” plot to return the American Southwest to Mexico. Minutemen cofounder Chris Simcox liked to claim that blue-helmeted U.N. troops were helping to prepare for an invasion over the Mexico border. Murderess Shawna Forde claimed the New World Order was working with the cartels. It’s in their DNA.
So the appearance of QAnon conspiracy cultists, as the New York Times’ Miriam Jordan reports, among the vigilantes who have been out greeting and frequently harassing border crossers in the Arizona borderlands for some time now is not really a surprise. But it raises the stakes to considerably when it becomes clear that they are targeting children for “rescue” and essentially preying on their presence to spread their unhinged worldview.
The central player in this scenario is a QAnon influencer from Las Vegas named Jason Frank, who became a celebrity of sorts within the ranks of the cult’s believers when he helped lift an elderly World War II veteran onto the stage to join Donald Trump at one of his rallies in Phoenix in February 2020 while wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a large “Q.” He produces a steady stream of far-right conspiracist rants and memes for his large audience of thousands of followers on Facebook—which promptly removed Frank’s Facebook page on Monday, after the Times published Jordan’s story.
In recent months, Frank had focused heavily on conspiracy theories claiming that the Walt Disney Co. was run by pedophiles, and that its output is “grooming” children into LGBTQ “lifestyles.” But in late April, he suddenly shifted gears, and moved down to the Sonoran desert in Arizona with a trailer and his teenage son, set up a sunshade and some chairs and began posting photos and videos as he scouted for border crossers—particularly those with children. And particularly groups of children.
“They are being trafficked, sex trafficked. That’s the number one trade,” Frank told Jordan. “The money, that’s where it’s at now.”
Frank, who favors Q T-shirts and a black American flag ballcap, set up shop in the Altar Valley outside of Sasabe, a small border village in a stretch of the Sonoran where there has been a border fence since the mid-2000s, long preceding Trump; the nearest town to Sasabe on the American side is Arivaca, where Forde, a far-right militia leader, masterminded the murder of a local Latino family in 2009—including a 9-year-old girl. Locals view activists like Frank with extreme wariness, for good reason.
He is following in the footsteps of his fellow QAnon Trumpists in AZ Patriots, the far-right group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” protests outside ballot-counting facilities in Phoenix and, more recently, has been prowling the borderlands to record its leader as she harassed border crossers in another stretch of desert. They have a lengthy history of close ties with QAnon and Frank.
When he encountered border crossers with children, Frank would greet them, offer them water and food and clothing, and gather information about them. He’d fire up the grill and cook hamburgers and hot dogs for them while trying to figure out where the kids were headed and whether or not they were part of the pedophilia rings he believes operate as child traffickers on the border.
In a since-deleted Facebook post, Frank has mused aloud that the border wall—comprised of tall rusted steel beams—had some previously unnoticed mystical qualities, thanks to Trump:
If I told you the Wall is a giant tuning fork, an instrument when completed will be able to heal the Earth and Humanity would u call me crazy????,
He is fond of giving the kids free “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirts, and then mugging with them for Facebook selfies with his fellow border watchers. Among the men who have shown up to help is Justin Andersch, a fellow Las Vegas resident who had his own moment of Trumpist viral notoriety when he accosted Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak at a restaurant where he was dining with his family and threatened to “string you up by a lamppost.”
Andersch presented a much friendlier face as he greeted the young border crossers: “Who wants cookies?”
“The kids are a prop for them to use to spread their message,” Mia Bloom, an expert on extremist radicalization, told the Times. “They are instrumentalizing the children for internal propaganda and to further their political agenda.”
Frank has harassed the humanitarian volunteers who try to provide water, clothing, food, and first aid to migrants in the area, including a film crew that happened to include a Latino man. Those same volunteers are outraged that Frank and his conspiracy cultists were out diverting children before the Border Patrol came along to pick them up.
“We believe the conduct of this group is illegal and extremely dangerous,” public defender Margo Cowan told the Times, noting that anyone who finds children alone in the desert is required by law to immediately contact law enforcement. Particularly worrisome, she added, was that Frank and his cohorts are collecting home address and phone information about the people the migrants intended to join in the U.S. and then contacting those people.
Frank acknowledged that their intention is to make those people fearful: “We have people that call and do welfare checks and keep showing up to make it uncomfortable for them,” he said. Like most border vigilantes—from Simcox to Forde and beyond—he claimed to be making things better on the border: “That’s why we are out here creating a solution, being a part of it.”
This is what such vigilantes have always claimed, even while piling up a nonstop record of criminality and violence, claiming they represent “real Americans” while evading any kind of accountability to anyone, including civil authorities. They also seem to consistently enjoy a cozy relationship with the Border Patrol, which nonetheless appears to be keeping them at arm’s length.
Previous border “Patriot” groups have gotten into serious trouble with the law for similar behavior, harassing immigrants at the border. One group, dubbed the United Constitutional Patriots, hassled border crossers in New Mexico in 2019 and ran afoul of authorities by posing as Border Patrol officers while doing so. After the local community ran their operation out of town, federal authorities charged their leader, Jim Benvie, with impersonating a federal agent. He was convicted and sentenced to 21 months in prison.
There is a long, deep tradition of sociopathic behavior within the border-vigilante movement, dating back to its origins 20 years ago. That’s a product of its fundamentally anti-empathetic politics, which revolve around the crude demonization of immigrant “others.” Even children.