Armed Militia Groups Mobilizing at the Texas Border
August 4, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
“You see an illegal. You point your gun dead at him, right between his eyes, and you say, ‘Get back across the border or you will be shot.’”
—Chris Davis, “Laredo Sector Militia Commander” of “Operation Secure Our Border”
Revolutionaries and other pro-immigrant protesters confront fascist anti-immigrant mob in Murrieta, Calif. on July 4. Earlier in the week a reactionary mob had prevented three buses with detained immigrant children from reaching a Border Patrol processing center in Murrieta, which is north of San Diego, not far from the border with Mexico. AP photo
Ten or more newly formed teams of vigilantes armed with semi-automatic weapons are now actively patrolling along the Texas-Mexico border, from El Paso to Laredo, to stop “illegal immigrants” coming from Central America through Mexico. And militia groups from around the country—many of which took part in the armed standoff at Cliven Bundy’s Nevada ranch this April—are now calling for “patriots” to go to the Texas border to join “Operation Secure Our Border.”
The crisis that is driving tens of thousands of children from the most impoverished Central American countries to the Texas border—caused by decades of military, political, and economic crimes committed by this U.S. imperialist system—is being used as a rallying cry by a growing, armed right-wing militia movement. Their following is said to be growing through social media, blogs, and a 24-hour “Patriot Hotline” that recruits and mobilizes volunteers.
Chris Davis, the commander of one of these armed militias now “deployed” along the Texas border near Laredo, claims, “We have patriots all across this country who are willing to sacrifice their time, money, even quit their jobs to come down and fight for freedom, liberty and national sovereignty.” And a call to action circulating on Facebook and websites reads: “We need at least 20 thousand troops there to secure the border. We need to save America. Look to the future. Step up NOW!!”
These vicious, ignorant, and fascist vigilantes arrogantly believe they have every right to brutalize and possibly kill a Latino youth because in their minds one of their country’s “laws” has been broken.
These children at the border are criminals? The horrific conditions in the countries they are desperately trying to flee—Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—are “made in the USA.” The ruthless dictators the U.S. put in place and armed and the death squads they trained at the “School of the Assassins” (The U.S. Army School of the Americas) in Georgia slaughtered hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s, drowning the resistance to U.S. domination surging through Central America at that time in rivers of blood.
The economies of these countries have been systematically pillaged by U.S. imperialism for decades, and gangs and tremendous violence have filled the economic void left especially after the 2005 Central American Free Trade Agreement that overwhelmingly benefited U.S. agribusinesses and manufacturers.
These children are not criminals. They are not “illegal immigrants.” They are living witnesses to the criminality of this imperialist system and the ruling class that directs it.
These children have a completely legitimate, legal right to apply for asylum in the U.S. and not be forced to return to the horrendous conditions they are trying to flee. The vigilantes have no right to treat them as criminals—much less inflict violence on innocent lives.
These children have been driven from their homelands, fleeing at tremendous risk to escape conditions they had no role in creating. No, it’s NOT their parents’ fault—they aren’t the ones who created this crisis. They didn’t call in the butchers in the 1980s—the U.S. and its local enforcers did. They didn’t ask for the “choice” of either slaving in dangerous jobs that pay next to nothing growing sugar used by Coca Cola to make their profits—or going to work for a gang, with the danger of dying for refusing to join. No, it’s not because of “bad parenting;” as though if they’d made better decisions their child could have escaped this. All of this criminality committed by this system here and all around the world—and the “benefits” of living inside the belly of this beast—is what these racist, fascist vigilantes are out to “secure.”
A press release from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency commenting on the militia groups along the border said, “They could have disastrous personal and public safety consequences,” but was also careful not to criticize them. Some border sheriffs—including those in Brooks and Hidalgo counties, where the influx of Central American children is centered—have rejected offers of help. But the fact is that in many cases, these armed militias are working hand-in-hand with law enforcement at different levels.
Chris Davis said he had contacted the FBI in Laredo and that local law enforcement “is well aware of what we’re doing.” The Los Angeles Times interviewed another militia leader who has joined Davis’s “Operation SOB”—Rick Light, who leads the “Edwards Plateau Rangers,” a militia in Rocksprings, Texas, about 100 miles north of the border. Light says they “have worked with the local Edwards County sheriff and county agencies for the last two years.” Light said his group wants to be a “productive, professional militia that just assists our law enforcement.” He told the Los Angeles Times that he had just traveled to Laredo to “meet with Border Patrol agents and see some hot spots. This week, he hopes to meet with Laredo police and local sheriff’s officials.” (July 8, 2014)
This country has a long, ugly history of its legal machinery of oppression and repression—the police forces and law enforcement on every level—working hand-in-glove with extralegal, armed vigilante forces that are given free rein to operate “outside the law” and to terrorize masses of oppressed people with impunity. The lynching of Black people by the KKK, without any fear of retribution, played an essential role in enforcing the oppressed position of Black people during the period of segregation.
And internationally, as we’ve spoken to above, the U.S. created and closely supervised the extralegal “death squads” that operated in these countries and carried out systematic terror through mass murder of whole village populations during the period of the revolutionary struggles in the 1980s. That the children and grandchildren of that “made in the USA” slaughter are now becoming targets in the sights of these armed American vigilantes is utterly intolerable.
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