Militias operating along the US–Mexico border plan to continue their vigilante operations once president-elect Donald Trump takes office, and some see themselves as acting in concert with military and federal agents to execute mass deportation plans.
It’s unclear how this would work in practice, but Tim Foley, head of Arizona Border Recon, a “civilian patrol group” based out of Altar Valley that claims to disrupt smuggling and trafficking routes, tells WIRED he has been in contact with the incoming Trump administration and that he expects to be a valuable resource to them.
“We’re in talks with a few different people,” says Foley, who rejects the term militia. “We have a better lay of the land than the federal agents do.”
The Trump transition team did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Over the past two decades, vigilantes armed with guns and nativist rhetoric—and increasingly, with drones and high-tech trail cams—have acted with impunity, positioning themselves as authorities in borderlands in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, muddying the line between civilian and official, hunting down asylum seekers, and even taking groups of migrants “into custody” before handing them over to the feds. Earlier this month, two leaders of a militia were convicted on federal charges for plotting to hunt and kill migrants and federal border agents.
And now, as Trump prepares to take office in January, Foley isn’t the only one in this space who sees a place for vigilantes on the border. Other paramilitary groups and civilians also hope that they’ll be welcome to assist in the enforcement of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
On Monday, via a post on Truth Social, Trump confirmed that his administration will utilize the military to conduct mass deportations. Mass deportations and reversing what he deemed an “invasion” permitted by the Biden administration were part of a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign. It appears that proposed members of Trump’s administration are open to civilian assistance on the border, too: Last week, during an appearance on Fox & Friends, incoming “border czar” Thomas Homan said that he has been bombarded by messages from veterans and former agents offering to assist border operations. “There's a lot of good patriots,” Homan said. “Thousands of retired agents, border patrol agents, retired military who have volunteered to help secure the border.”
Arizona Border Recon is one of the most high-profile paramilitary groups in operation along the border with Mexico.
Foley declined to say who, exactly, he’d been in touch with in the incoming Trump administration, but he said he feels confident that they’ll need his expertise. “Everyone’s going to be tied up rounding people up and getting them out of here,” he says. “It's still going to leave a need for live, real-time intel.”
“This is my 14th year doing this,” Foley says. “I’ve hiked over 2,000 miles of [migrant] trails. Most of my guys are certified trackers; we know how to read the ground, age tracks, and know if something’s old or new. We know how many people are traveling together and if they are carrying heavy packs on their backs.”
Foley says that his group currently has about six dozen volunteers who go out on border operations, often for a week at a time. They collect intel via trail cameras they’ve dotted around, take footage from a distance using drones, and take photos or videos using cameras mounted on spotting scopes.
Veterans on Patrol (VOP), based out of Pima County is another paramilitary group that operates along the Arizona border. Their leader, Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, a Christian nationalist with an extensive criminal record, tells WIRED that they also have no plans to stand down operations. But VOP, which was initially founded in 2015 out of concern for the veteran suicide rate but morphed into an outfit for far-right vigilantism, operates differently than Arizona Border Recon. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, VOP has “incorporated QAnon conspiracy theories into their activities as well … under the exaggerated premise that they are rescuing children from satanic pedophiles.” (Veterans on Patrol also recently made headlines for making threats toward the US military, who they believe was responsible for manufacturing October’s Hurricane Milton).
Meyer told WIRED that he found God after spending time in juvenile detention facilities (and extended periods of solitary confinement) for a litany of violent crimes. He believes his group’s border activities are sanctioned by God, and he doesn’t have to answer to federal law. He has, however, continued to get in trouble with the law. Earlier this year he was charged with repeatedly stealing water tanks that humanitarian groups had left out to assist migrants near the border. He was also previously accused of felony trespassing after he and other members of his group filmed themselves entering an empty ranch house that they believed (falsely) was a hub for child sex trafficking.
He and other members of VOP decide which migrants are “good” and and who are “bad,” claiming that they help the former, including women and children, while turning over the latter to federal agents.
Meyer doesn’t care if his activities interfere with Trump’s plans. “Who gives Trump authority to decide who is good or bad?” Meyer told WIRED. “We have the authority, because our authority comes from our most high God.” The Southern Poverty Law Center says that members of VOP have been “spotted brandishing firearms while they patrol the desert for cartel hideout spots and for migrants crossing through the region.” Meyer says that they use real-time cameras, drones, and flares. “Basically all the same tech that the Border Patrol has, except we don’t have the same rules,” he said. Meyer says they also conduct sabotage operations against individuals they believe are involved in child trafficking: “Online patrolling, hacking social media accounts, sabotaging vehicles,” he said, rattling off a few examples. He says that they put sugar or water in people’s gas tanks and plant boxes of nails on the roads—and claims that he has even earned a few “fist bumps” from border patrol agents over the years for his activities. WIRED wasn’t able to independently confirm his sabotage activities or his claimed interactions with border agents.
In the early 2000’s, the modern militia movement—which formed in the 1980s out of animus toward the federal government—started training its sights on the nearly 2,000-mile stretch of borderland that the US shares with Mexico. This marked a resurgence of a long tradition of American border vigilantism that had been riddled with violence and white supremacist ideology. (In the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan, led by David Duke, launched its own border patrol to fight the “illegal alien problem.”) This has continued over the years, sometimes with dire consequences: In 2009, members of a border vigilante group called Minutemen American Defense shot and killed a 9-year-old girl and her father after breaking into their home in Arizona. In 2019, the leader of the United Constitutional Patriots was arrested on gun charges after the group touted video showing members of the group detaining 200 migrants at gunpoint on the border in New Mexico.
Border militias under the first Trump administration flourished, emboldened by surging anti-immigrant and nativist rhetoric. The Oath Keepers, which was one of the biggest militias until its founder and dozens of its members were arrested for their roles in the January 6 Capitol riot, had long engaged in border activity. (This was a point of friction among some chapters, as some members felt like the border vigilantism undermined the authority of the Border Patrol and therefore ran counter to their respect for law enforcement.) The Proud Boys have reportedly deployed to the border. Anecdotally, smaller cells have also been reported to go out looking for people who’ve made unauthorized border crossings.
Over the years, many of these groups have operated with a carte blanche from local authorities. Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Arizona, told the Los Angeles Times that he believes civilian operations along the border are constitutionally protected activity, but he acknowledged that having a bunch of armed guys running around in camo can occasionally create a headache for actual law enforcement, because “we don’t know who the good guys and the bad guys are oftentimes.” (Lamb is a Constitutional Sheriff, meaning he believes that sheriffs hold supreme authority and are answerable only to God, not the federal government).
Once Trump takes office, some paramilitary types hope they’ll have tacit authority from the government to engage in vigilante activity on the border. A Telegram group catering to self-identifying members of different militias has been abuzz with talk about Trump’s border plans. “I’m going to be extremely happy if they would deputize civilians in the war on invasion from the borders,” one member of the chat wrote. “Yes sir, I’ve been inquiring into that [with] some close to this admin,” someone responded. “Something has to be done as [the] issue is massive and manpower needed will be huge.” When someone suggested that militia members stand down operations, they were accused by another member of being a “fed” or a “victim of stand down psyops.”
“Anyone caught discouraging Patriots from uniting Constitutionally on a massive scale is suspect,” they wrote. “The basic premise of the Militia is to Constitutionally UNITE.” Another fantasized about how “patriots formerly (sic) trained” could deal with cartels on the border during Trump’s mass deportations.
These fantasies have also spilled out across social media. “The unconstitutional, illegal, intentional border invasion is the true insurrection, therefore the insurrection act should be used and the Militia/Military should be called up to put it down immediately,” one person wrote on Truth Social last week. “Godspeed MAGA Militia!!”
And the Proud Boys of South Texas reposted a meme showing a group of soldiers riding in the back of a truck, with the caption, “The boys and I when we're deputized as ICE under Trump's second term.”
For some, the idea of being deputized is more than a meme. “We’ll get word at the end of January about the plans,” says Foley. “We’ve told them, we’re all in if you want us, if you need help with intel, or recon. Just let us know.”