The FBI won another glorious victory over the enemies of the American state.
In New Mexico, 69-year-old Larry Mitchell Hopkins, also known as Johnny Horton, Jr., was arrested. From a photograph published on the Internet, an elderly man with long and dirty-looking hair, with a weathered worn face and characteristic bags under his eyes, is looking at us. Such men in the American outback - on the patch of a bunch, especially in the vicinity of roadside bars.
Meanwhile, the arrest of Hopkins and broadcast on leading television channels, and on the editorials of newspapers. The fact is that Hopkins is one of the activists (in some media they even call him the leader) of the United Constitutional Patriots organization operating in New Mexico. This local militia is a militia fighting illegal migration.
New Mexico is one of the most vulnerable states in the United States. The length of the border with Mexico is small (at least compared to Texas) - only 290 km, but this segment is guarded very little. New Mexico is a relatively sparsely populated state (2 million people in the territory where Greece could fit, for example), and the border zone settlements are not cities or even towns, but separate ranches and small farms. Not enough funds are allocated from the federal budget for the creation of border infrastructure (all because of the same sparse population), and as a result New Mexico has become a favorite “corridor” for drug cartels and smugglers. In neighboring Texas, the border is equipped with much more technological, there are video cameras that allow you to monitor the situation online, drones fly there, and in general Texas is Texas.
In other places, where the efforts of the Trump administration even before the confrontation with the congress because of the financing of the Great Mexican Wall, defenses were modernized and put in order, migrants also had a hard time: for example, the famous caravan from Central America could not break from Tijuana into San Diego, where Trump pulled together almost 6,000 troops to help border guards and police officers.
And the border between Mexico and New Mexico is full of holes like Dutch cheese.
Locals, of course, have long been tired of it. And since Americans are a nation that adores organizing into different leagues, unions and associations, it is not surprising that in recent years groups have appeared in New Mexico to help border guards and the police solve the problem of illegal migrants after the rain.
One of these groups is the United Constitutional Patriots. Its members buy their own equipment and weapons for their own money (an article in The New York Times devoted to the “patriots”, illustrated by a photo of one of the militiamen on combat duty — from the American ranger somewhere in Afghanistan it differs little ) and catch migrants who have crossed the border.
The fact is that if migrants manage not only to enter the United States, but also to get to one of the “refuge cities”, then they may not worry about anything else at all.
The city of refuge is a city in which local authorities pursue a policy of protecting illegal immigrants. They do not use municipal means to enforce national immigration laws and prohibit the police from requesting information regarding a person’s immigration status. It’s not easy to believe, but it’s true: there are dozens of refuge cities in the United States, including New York, in which illegal immigrants can live at least their whole lives without fear of persecution and deportation. One such city is even in Texas (Austin). And in New Mexico there are no such refuges. But New Mexico is an infrastructure node, or, as it is now fashionable to say, a hub. The state permeates an extensive system of both national and interstate highways.
"The combination of many high-speed roads and the lack of population portend a catastrophe for the residents of this state," the US border service says. - Drug cartels have taken power here. Even the federal government is not able to help. ”
The militiamen, who called themselves “United Constitutional Patriots,” decided to help the federal government a little.
They did it with enthusiasm and very effectively. In the past two months alone, the “United Constitutional Patriots” detained more than 5,600 migrants, who were handed over to border patrols so that they would take the trespassers to prison. The sheer number of detainees eloquently testifies to the scale of the disaster that befell New Mexico.
But the activity of the “patriots” did not appeal to everyone.
A few days ago, videos appeared on the network that captured the moment when the militiamen detained a group of illegal migrants near the town of Sunland Park. This entry angered another social organization, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which sent a letter to the state attorney general where the actions of the militia were compared to kidnapping (kidnapping). And the group itself “United Constitutional Patriots” in the letter was called nothing less than “fascist militia”.
ACLU is a very influential organization. It exists for nearly a century and unites more than a million people in the United States. She has very good and highly paid lawyers, and for almost 20 years, Anthony Romero has been a Puerto Rican in origin (this is tolerant!) And an openly gay vocation (this is even more tolerant).
Choosing between coarse redneck militia and a gay, gay lawyer from New York, New Mexico's attorney general Hector Balderas did not hesitate.
He signed an arrest warrant for Larry Mitchell Hopkins, calling him "a dangerous criminal who cannot be with a weapon next to children and families." And Hopkins immediately arrested the FBI.
“Today’s arrest by the FBI,” said the prosecutor, “is intended to remind that the control over the observance of the law must be carried out not by armed self-government, but by trained law enforcement officers.”
Basically, right. But what to do if these employees in New Mexico are chronically short, and the Congress does not want to allocate money to strengthen the southern border?
However, in the history of Hopkins, there is another very interesting point. On Monday, Hopkins appeared before the court, and it turned out that he was not accused of anything other than illegal possession of weapons and ammunition.
In general, New Mexico refers to the states in which the system has "must issue". This means that state authorities must issue a license, which is valid throughout the state, to any law-abiding person who has a clear criminal record and has shown a sufficient level of possession of weapons. But Hopkins, as it turned out, was in disarray with the law, although quite comical (for example, in 2006, Oregon police arrested him when he, dressed in police uniforms, showed his gun and an inscription on the gas station to teens at a gas station ).
When arrested, Hopkins said he worked for the federal government (or rather, for the George W. Bush administration). He told this story differently each time: in some variations he searched for underground laboratories for the production of methamphetamines, in others he hunted Latin American gangsters who had illegally penetrated the United States, and in the third - conducted covert operations in Afghanistan. In general, a fairly typical poseur and balabol, not played in childhood as superheroes and secret agents.
And this lover of posing as either Captain America or James Bond on a drunken shop told his friends at the bar that his group (that is, “constitutional partisans”) was preparing to kill Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros. Obama - because he opened the gates to the crowds of migrants, Hillary - because she was a rival to Donald Trump, and Soros - as the most generous sponsor of the Democratic Party, and indeed one of the shadow rulers of the world. Then, in 2017, the FBI received this information from one of its whistleblowers, rubbing around Hopkins, and possibly sitting in the very bar where he struck the imagination of his interlocutors with his fantastic stories, but did not give it, apparently, This is nothing more than a drunken tale.
And now, when the Attorney General of New Mexico ordered “Fas!”, The Hopkins file was quickly brought to light. And as a result, Hopkins is no longer accused of “kidnapping” (after all, it’s only in the liberal media that sounds convincing, but in court such a case will collapse as soon as the border guards testify that they have дали handed off the пох stolen ’hands on their hands).
No, it's much worse. Hopkins is charged with preparing to assassinate former US President B.Kh. Obama, George Soros and other key figures of the Democratic Party.
During the notorious "Stalin's purges" under investigation were forced to admit the most incredible things. And liberal historians on both sides of the Atlantic are very fond of citing as an example all these confessions in digging a tunnel from Bombay to London, arguing about the brutal grin of Soviet totalitarianism. But the accusation of Hopkins' not-the-distant Kite in preparing for the murder of "Trump's main enemies" is not much different from the dark fantasies of Stalinist justice.
“We cannot allow armed racist militants to kidnap and detain people seeking asylum,” says the ACLU letter to the governor of New Mexico, Michel Luhan Grisham, and Prosecutor General Hector Balderas.
And it is clear that the appeals of the defenders of American freedoms headed by a gay Puerto Rican will surely be heard. Because the governor of New Mexico, Michel Luhan Grisham - the first female Democrat as head of this state (and the first Latin American) - has long expressed her extremely negative attitude to the idea of Trump to build the Great Mexican Wall. She even starred in an unofficial video that has become very popular on the web, where she passes through walls like Harry Potter.
So the poor fellow Hopkins, most likely, will be planted - and for a long time. And with the "United Constitutional Partisans" the authorities of New Mexico will fight mercilessly, because in conditions when Congress fiercely resists the construction of the wall, only civilian activity of Trump supporters can be a protective barrier on the southern borders of the United States. Speaking figuratively, they can become such a wall until the president succeeds in building a concrete or steel structure.
The combination played out in New Mexico is, of course, directed against Trump himself. Having suffered a humiliating defeat in an attempt to dislodge the hated president with the help of Muller's report, Trump's enemies strike at his “support group” —on rednecks, simple supporters of traditional values, not spoiled by tolerance, who are ready to defend their country against foreign invasion.
Therefore, the matter here, of course, is not in Hopkins, although it will be interesting to watch the process on which he will be asked to confess to the preparation of the murder of Hillary Clinton. Hopkins is not even Sheriff Arpayo, whom I wrote about in August 2017 and who was fortunate enough to receive a presidential pardon.
However, if someone will protect the wall of Trump, then it is such people as Arpayo and Hopkins. In the end, in the game of thrones, beloved by Trump, the wall separating the Seven Kingdoms from the monsters and the wild of the North, it was not the noble knights who defended, but the Night Watch, recruited from any rabble. And if now the liberal “in-depth state” indicatively condemns the “militiaman” from New Mexico, this will be a painful defeat for the president, a significant part of whose electoral base is such, from the point of view of the liberals, “scum”. No wonder that Hillary Clinton long ago called Trump's supporters "an indecent gathering of homophobes, xenophobes, racists, sexists, and Islamophobes."
She said this tirade not just anywhere, but at an event organized by LGBT activists, and ended it proudly: “Fortunately, they are not all of America!”
Yes, not all. But from the rest of the advocates, as history shows, so-so.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.