Jamiesfeast – A convoy started by far-right extremists is heading toward the Texas-Mexico border this weekend to demonstrate support for the Texas government in its ongoing stalemate with the federal government over the migrant crisis, sparking concerns among some experts about potential violence.
The “Take our Border Back” convoy embarked on its journey from Virginia Beach, Virginia, earlier this week, initially consisting of only a small number of cars and trucks. However, as it made its way from Dripping Springs, Texas, towards its final destination in Quemado, Texas, the convoy grew to over 200 vehicles. The convoy’s endpoint is just 20 miles away from the border town of Eagle Pass, where the Texas National Guard has assumed control of a public park, denying entry to Border Patrol agents.
U.S. officials are actively monitoring publicly available information regarding the trucker convoy.
The people in charge of the convoy have said in public that they will keep it calm and that they have decided not to go into Eagle Pass. However, at a gathering in Dripping Springs on Thursday night with hundreds of people, racist and paranoid comments were made. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, elected officials from Texas, musician Ted Nugent, Christian nationalist preachers, and Lara Logan, a reporter who turned into a conspiracy theorist, were some of the people who spoke.
Researchers say that the convoy is also made up of members of the Proud Boys, neo-Nazi groups, and gangs.
“The eyes of the world are on Texas right now,” Palin stated. “Now, more than ever, it’s required of us to stand up and fight for what’s right, because it’s unconscionable, it’s treasonous, what our own federal government is doing to us in actually sanctioning an invasion, a foreign invasion, of our country.”
Steve Bannon, who used to be Trump’s chief White House strategist, has a podcast called “War Room,” where Michael Yon is a regular guest. Yon repeated ideas from the so-called “great replacement theory,” which is an ethnonationalist belief that there is a deliberate effort to replace the white population in the U.S. and other places around the world.
One of the people planning the convoy, Pete Chambers, talked about his ideas for it on Alex Jones’s conspiracy-filled show InfoWars last week. Telling Jones that he wants to “pair up with law enforcement who are constitutionally sound,” he said, “we’re at 1774 right now.”
Freddy Cruz, who oversees monitoring and training at the pro-democracy Western States Center, expressed concern that migrants will suffer harm in the future due to the use of white supremacist language by those in the convoy and at Thursday’s gathering.
In reference to the three major mass shootings in El Paso, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, where the shooters espoused racist ideas before the attacks, Cruz said, “That’s all problematic because they’re operating on a belief system, like the ‘great replacement’ narrative, that has had terrible effects on American citizens.”
Last week, the League of United Latin American Citizens sent out a warning saying that people in the convoy might get violent toward immigrant neighborhoods and their members.
“We know a lot of them have guns,” said Domingo Garcia, President of LULAC. “And many of them have extremist views, especially in terms of the fear-mongering and scapegoating of immigrants and Hispanics.”
According to a Customs and Border Protection official, the caravan’s arrival caused Border Patrol to move migrants out of a large tent holding facility near Eagle Pass as a safety measure because of threats that haven’t been proven.
CBS News received a statement from a CBP spokesperson on Friday saying that the agency was “taking appropriate and necessary actions to keep our employees and migrants in our custody safe.” We’ll keep an eye out and keep working closely with our law enforcement partners.
Extremist groups and gangs are also talking about whether they will join the convoy or act on their own along the southern border because of what it says, Cruz warned.
“Everyone is paying close attention,” Cruz said. “And we’re seeing some of these anti-democracy groups acting and sort of mobilizing around the border, specifically targeting both migrants and humanitarians that are assisting them.”
Besides Quemado, the convoy is holding two other protests this weekend. One is in Yuma, Arizona, and the other is in San Ysidro, California.
This past week, the Supreme Court said that the Biden administration could take down the razor wire that Texas had put up along the border. But also last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton turned down a request from the Department of Homeland Security to let Border Patrol agents into Shelby Park, an Eagle Pass city-owned public park that used to be a popular place for migrants to cross the border illegally.
In public, both former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have backed Abbott’s standoff over Shelby Park. Social media user and Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana wrote last week that “the feds are staging a civil war, and Texas should stand their ground.” Extremist groups shared the post with a lot of people.