(2) In the 1970s, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan began a Klan Border Patrol in Texas and California. Their aim was to detain undocumented immigrants and to assist the U.S. Border Patrol.
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This is alarming, but what seems new here has a long history. (1)https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/new-mexico-militia.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&fbclid=IwAR0rKgYxu8IZbFTFw186esNgB6hHX8LCEVkH9TG7VDng7qCkgFs2ypcSjSo …
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(3) The press at the time largely dismissed this as a publicity stunt, but these patrols were highly militarized and did have the effect of intimidating border crossers. They were reported on in Mexico and as far away as Nicaragua.
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(4) Klan Border Watch was implemented at the same time as a string of paramilitary camps that sought to train Klansmen and other white people for race war.
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(5) Later, in the 1980s, a group called Civilian Military Assistance, and later Civilian Materiel Assistance, detained undocumented immigrants crossing near Nogales, AZ/Nogales, Sonora
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(6) This is the same Civilian Military Assistance that participated in the Iran Contra Scandal,* founded by Tom Posey, who described it as an alternative to joining the Klan
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(7) Here's what CMA did. This is from my book, Bring the War Home: "In July 1986, nineteen CMA members in camouflage fatigues left Tucson, Arizona, to patrol the Lochiel Valley, three miles north of the border and thirty miles east of Nogales."
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(8) "... Armed with semiautomatic weapons and night vision goggles, the patrol members ventured two and a half miles into Mexico before returning to the United States. There, they set booby traps for, fired upon, and stopped two vehicles transporting undocumented immigrants."
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(9) "They detained sixteen men, women, and children, forcing them to stand at gunpoint for ninety minutes with their legs spread and their hands over their heads." (These are stress positions designed to hurt people, by the way.)
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(10) "The U.S. legal system broadly failed to respond to the CMA incident, which theoretically constituted both kidnapping and a violation of the Neutrality Act. The undocumented immigrants detained by CMA were immediately deported."
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(11) "Then the Cochise County attorney, Alan Polley, decided not to prosecute the CMA mercenaries. Before being elected county attorney, Polley had served as defense attorney for three men accused of torturing, robbing, beating, and shooting at three undocumented immigrants..."
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(12) "... trespassing on their ranch in 1976, in the Hanigan Case." SO:
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(13) The CMA case couldn't be prosecuted because 1. a government government official with a history of defending vigilante violence declined to enforce the law and 2. all the key witnesses (the undocumented crossers) were deported and then couldn't be found to testify.
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(14) History can show us that this has long been a strategy of white power movement activists that has not been prosecuted by the state. You can read more about both of these incidents, and the broader movement, here https://www.powells.com/book/-9780674237698 …
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(15) Also: the next thing will be a bunch of claims about how militias are "neutral," coming from all kinds of people (militias, media, and officials). Militias are not neutral.
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(16) Militias are one part, one strand, of a complicated antigovernment movement that also includes white power activism. We must do the difficult work of understanding this better, and reckoning with its threat to our democracy.
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End of conversation
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