Anti-immigration convoy cancels Texas event over 'death threats'

8/4/2014

• Leader of 30-vehicle convoy tells Guardian: ‘We are peaceful’
• Protest is covering 1,500 miles along border in nine days

Central American migrants jump and ride a train headed northwest from Gregurio Mendez, Tabasco. Photograph: Zuma Press, Inc./Alamy

A convoy of anti-immigration activists touring the border with Mexico to defend the US from “invasion” has cancelled an event in Texas because of alleged death threats.

The 30-vehicle convoy aborted a planned rally in El Paso on Sunday over safety concerns, said the convoy organiser, Eric Odom.

“We had to cancel that because of death threats against our crew and convoy,” he told the Guardian, speaking by phone from a New Mexico highway. “We’re not into that. We are a very peaceful convoy and we want to show that the border is very dangerous and open.”

Odom said the threats were made via social media. He declined to give details but said the warnings had been saved with screen grabs.

The convoy started on Friday in Murrieta, the California town where protesters last month blocked buses filled with undocumented children and women from Central America. It hopes to inspire other citizen border patrols with the “spirit of Murrieta”.

On Saturday it passed through Arizona, where it picketed the Phoenix offices of the Republican senator John McCain, whom it accuses of promoting “pro-invasion” legislation.

The convoy, which includes cars and trucks painted with slogans and stars and stripes, will stage its next public event in Laredo on Tuesday or Wednesday, said Odom, who is also the managing editor of LibertyNews.com. The trek is due to cover 1,500 miles over nine days and finish in McAllen, Texas, near where the border meets the Gulf of Mexico.

US Customs and Border Protection, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, is liaising with the convoy, said Odom. “We’ll be given a tour of an area completely overrun by cartel activity,” he said.

A Homeland Security patrol apparently complained of harassment on Sunday after members of the convoy drew alongside and filmed it, prompting local police to briefly stop and question the cavalcade.

With Washington deadlocked over the recent surge of unaccompanied children crossing the border the convoy is one of several groups to have taken matters into its own hands, portraying the border as a leaky sieve exploited by criminals, terrorists and disease-carriers.

On Sunday the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, discussed the issue on CNN. Asked if he was prepared to keep National Guard troops at the border indefinitely, he referred to “other individuals” who might “come to assist in securing that border”. 

“What I’m prepared to do,” he said, “is not just the National Guard, but [to deploy] our department of public safety, our Texas Ranger recon team, parks and wildlife wardens … and I will suggest to you there will be other individuals who come to assist in securing that border.”

Overpasses for America plans nationwide protests on highway overpasses on 9 August. The Minuteman Project hopes to draw huge crowds to the border on 1 May 2015, which it has dubbed D-Day.

A mission statement on the border convoy’s website said it wishes to support local communities who take a stand against alleged federal government complicity in the influx.

“We are a coalition of citizens who share a deep concern for the invasion currently happening unchecked at our nation’s borders,” the statement says. “Our coalition calls on Americans to join those already defending the border and help stop government-funded human trafficking.”

The website includes a petition against “Barack Obama’s FOREIGN INVASION of our country”.

Critics say such rhetoric is xenophobic and overlooks the fact that the total number of people illegally crossing the border has fallen in recent years, and that many of the unaccompanied children are fleeing violence.

Miguel Juarez, an El Paso community activist, created a Facebook page to mobilise support against the El Paso rally before it was cancelled.

“I just think it’s important for people to have the information that these individuals are coming to express their message of hate,” he told the El Paso Times. “I think for them to come to a city with a large population of Mexican Americans, it’s an outrage.”

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