I don’t want to give border militias a platform from which more people can hear their violent message.
At the same time, I do want to know what they’re saying—I want to understand where they’re coming from and why they’re doing what they’re doing. How do they justify traveling to the desert with their trucks and guns, camping out, and waiting to for others to walk into their path? What makes them think that the country needs them there, brandishing weapons and glaring across the border into Mexico? Do they truly believe that, as private citizens with no mandate, they nevertheless have the right to pursue and detain people at gunpoint?
I saw militia members while I was in Arizona, but only from a distance. I didn’t get to pose these questions to them in person.
So I watched all 41 minutes and 33 seconds of the video that the United Constitutional Patriots filmed in Sunland Park, New Mexico, on Tuesday night. This is the video that drew the attention of the ACLU and national media this past week, leading to the New York Times headline “Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum Seekers at Gunpoint.”
The footage begins in media res. It’s dark, somewhat grainy; the framing is vertical. An unseen woman is recording with her cell phone and narrating intermittently. We see before us on the ground a crowd of people who have apparently just walked across the border from Mexico into the U.S. The militia intercepted their path and, based on their spokesman’s account, instructed them in Spanish to sit. And they did. (Of their own volition, he marveled, as if a bank teller empties her till and hands you cash of her own volition when you demand it of her while brandishing a gun.)
If I’d kept the footage muted, I’d have focused on what I was seeing: dozens of young parents crouching on the sand in the cold black of night, wrapping their arms tightly around their toddlers or clutching their children’s wrists to keep them close. They look tired and nervous in the spotlights shone by unseen people.
Thanks to the audio, I could hear that those spotlights were aimed by Americans speaking English. We can’t see them—the shot fixates on the families, rather than turn to reveal those in control of the situation. We therefore don’t know how many militiamen there are, but their footsteps can be heard in the background, pacing the edges of the group. It sounds like they’re all men; the only female voice is the one behind the sometimes-shaky cell phone camera.
If I didn’t already know that this video was shot by armed vigilantes who had detained these migrants independent of any law enforcement agency, I might assume that the unseen Americans are Border Patrol agents. That’s probably what the people on the ground assumed, too, at least at first—that the gun-toting figures in the night who greeted them and began issuing orders were official U.S. immigration authorities.
In that case, they were probably glad that things were going according to plan. We know that Central Americans seeking asylum in the U.S. are crossing the border in large groups for safety, to attract Border Patrol attention as quickly as possible so that they won’t be lost in the desert for hours on end but will instead by arrested promptly. Arrest is their goal: they want to make contact with authorities to begin the process of applying for asylum as soon as possible.
I wonder if these militia members know that. I wonder if they knew that their presence in the night accomplished exactly nothing, because this group of people wanted to be caught. They wanted to be instructed to sit, to gather, to get into vehicles. Border Patrol was on its way regardless and would follow an identical procedure with or without gun-wielding bystanders on hand. Did they know that? Or did they think they’d accomplished a heroic feat, forcing these people to stop and sit, preventing them from walking further north into New Mexico?
It’s hard to say what these militia members know or don’t know. Their voices can be heard offering commentary in the background, on and off, sometimes muffled, but they don’t describe any insights beyond vague right wing talking points.
Here’s a representative slice. At 9:52, a man’s voice pontificates:
We're just allowing people from all over the world to rush our borders, and this is the new exception to things. Like I said, we need to build the wall. [inaudible] Bottom line, we gotta support Donald Trump, he’s the only guy that’s telling the truth. The media’s not telling the truth. No one's telling the truth.
The woman holding the camera echoes him:
We need the wall, folks, please share this.
The man continues:
Unfortunately, because of the fact that they’re not armed and they’re coming in and invading us, it’s not an invasion. How do you define an invasion? How many people have to come through the borders, how many people have to come before you consider it an invasion?
He goes on, insisting that what we’re witnessing here is very much an invasion and a national security threat, part of a larger pattern of foreigners rushing our open borders.
And what do we see on the screen as these words are spoken?
Children in their parents’ laps, blinking and turning away from the light.
This is the invasion the militias warn are a threat to the nation.
You cannot pretend that we’re looking at an aggressive army, violent gang members, or ruthless drug traffickers when the evidence is huddled before us. We can hear your words, but we can also see for ourselves what’s taking place. These people are persecuted, worn down, frightened. The last thing they want is violence. To the contrary—they want peace, safety, sanctuary. It is evident that they didn’t “rush” the border—there’s more violence and risk of bodily harm when a crowd of shoppers “rush” the doors at Walmart on Black Friday. A wall wouldn’t protect us from their presence or change the fact that they need refuge—it would divert them or trap them elsewhere and deepen their desperation.
This is not an invasion. It is not.
Amid all this man’s nonsense—rhetoric that we already know to be wrong, but that has never sounded more nonsensical than when it’s spoken in the presence of these poor families—there’s one phrase I find particularly chilling. Unfortunately, because of the fact that they’re not armed. As if he wishes they were armed. Then there’d be no more quibbling over the word “invasion,” and he’d be justified in shooting at them, right? He could claim self-defense, national defense. His fantasy of combat is disappointingly under-served by the present reality, in which he hunts unarmed people on foot. If they came armed, he could engage in a real gun battle; he could claim he was a vigilante hero.
Unfortunately, because of the fact that they’re not armed.
Those are the words of someone lusting for violence and blood.
Someone going out of his way to stir up drama and conflict and power. Someone who feels gratified when he can lord over a crowd of cowering innocents and declare that their presence validates his political opinions and militaristic behavior.
A few minutes into his monologue, Border Patrol vehicles arrive on the scene. Agents yell instructions in Spanish; for the first time the migrants are given some explanation as to what is going on. They do exactly as they’re told, standing, shuffling across the shadowy dust, making their way like a flock of sheep toward the vehicles that will transport them to detention.
The militia members continue to prowl the periphery, guns in hand, supposedly helping the agents ensure that no one hides in the brush or makes a run for it. The camera follows directly behind; the woman’s narration continues, informing us that the people at the back of the group look sick, they’re walking so slow, one woman is pregnant, they’re holding the children’s wrists so tight.
Watching this tedious drama unfold for forty minutes gave me a stomachache. But I refused to look away.
Eventually the camerawoman, having slipped and tripped a few times on a rocky slope, declares that this is as far as she’ll go in following the crowd’s slow trudge toward the trucks. Here are her closing lines before she stops filming:
Alright guys, I'm gonna sign off. They're well on their way to wherever they're gonna take them, I don't know. But our men are walking down with them, following them. So, I don't know if you can still hear me, but if you can, God bless you all, and please say a prayer for all of our men out here on the border. And please share, share, share the heck out of this video everywhere. God bless y'all. Good night.
And the screen goes black.
They're well on their way to wherever they're gonna take them, I don't know.
You say you don’t know. But you can know. You’re apparently so invested in the border crisis that you’ve chosen to camp in the desert to witness and participate in what’s happening there. You’re so obsessed with these people that you consider it your duty to help detain and arrest them. You spent nearly an hour training your flashlight and your camera on their faces and describing their coughs to the world. And yet you haven’t given a thought to what will happen to them.
I’ve given more thought, at home at my computer, to these militias—trying to understand where they’re coming from and why they’re doing what they’re doing—than they’ve given to the migrants whose movements they’re hellbent on patrolling.
Wherever they’re gonna take them, I don’t know. But our men are walking down with them. She doesn’t really care what will become of the migrants, those coughing foreigners on the ground; she only cares about the men. Her men. Our men. Please say a prayer for all of our men out here.
The men who’ve chosen unasked to patrol the night with their firearms and detain frightened families? I don’t think they’re the ones who need our prayers.