On Saturday, a far-right convoy calling itself
“🔸God’s army🔸” is set to host rallies at different border towns along the US-Mexico border to decry what they call a migrant “invasion.”
Throughout the week, the group’s organizers made their way from Virginia Beach to Jacksonville, Florida, before splitting into three groups heading to rallies in #Yuma, Arizona, #SanYsidro, California, and near #EaglePass, Texas.
On a “🔸Take Our Border Back🔸” website, they called on “all active & retired law enforcement and military, veterans, mama bears, elected officials, business owners, ranchers, truckers, bikers, media and LAW ABIDING, freedom-loving Americans.”
The convoy, whose organizers have been known to disseminate anti-vaccine and election denial messages, as well as QAnon conspiracy theories, emerged in reaction to growing tensions around an ongoing border standoff between Gov. Greg Abbott and the federal government in Eagle Pass, Texas.
The Lone Star State’s National Guard has taken control of a park there, sealing it off with concertina wire and denying US Border Patrol access to the migrant crossing area where a woman and two children recently drowned in the Rio Grande.
Though those involved have described the nature of the gathering as peaceful (one organizer called it a “spiritual battle”), qextremism experts haven’t discounted the possibility of an escalation and political violence, especially in light of extremist online chatter about “exterminating” migrants.
Ahead of Saturday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) issued a national alert warning against “armed out-of-state extremists with a hate agenda.”
(The scope of the convoy came nowhere close to the organizers’ hopes for 700,000 participants.)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/far-right-convoy-anti-immigrant-rallies-us-mexico-border-abbott-biden/
