In mid-2009, nativist leaders scrambled to distance themselves from Minuteman American Defense (MAD) founder Shawna Forde, after the immigrant-bashing former child prostitute was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the slaying of an Arizona man and his 9-year old daughter.

Few were as adamant in their repudiations of Forde – who now sits on death row for the murder of Raul and Brisenia Flores – as Minuteman Project (MMP) President Jim Gilchrist. Within hours of the announcement of her arrest, he stripped MMP’s website of its many laudatory references to Forde’s group, extended his “condolences” to the victims and “all those who have been affected by the alleged incident,” and wrote, “Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project, Inc. is not affiliated with the Minuteman American Defense or Shawna Forde. The Minuteman American Defense is an independent patriot organization which participates in systematic border observation and reporting operations.” ( continue to full post… )

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the anti-immigrant hate group behind draconian immigration enforcement laws in Arizona, Alabama and elsewhere, appears to have misled law enforcement officers about a training program it’s sponsoring in Texas, Hatewatch has learned.

In an invitation E-mailed to an unknown number of sheriffs earlier this month, FAIR wrote that its “border school” had been approved by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program (HIDTA), a program of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that facilitates cooperation among local, state and federal law enforcement officials. A flier distributed by FAIR bears HIDTA’s official logo, and FAIR notes in the invitation that travel and lodging costs associated with the Sept. 21-22 event in El Paso “may be covered by your agency’s HIDTA funding.” ( continue to full post… )

Updated 5.04.12

Nativist extremists and white supremacists wasted little time responding with half-cocked conspiracy theories to the news that J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi border vigilante, had died in an apparent murder-suicide outside Phoenix. For some, the blame lay with Mexican drug cartels. For others, it was the Zionist Occupied Government, or ZOG, once again silencing a critic. ( continue to full post… )

Anti-liberal propaganda has been ramping up for years. Former Fox News host Glenn Beck, who was cited as an inspiration for at least three rightwing extremists accused of committing or plotting violence, called himself a “progressive hunter” and attempted to rebrand Hitler as a leftist. Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney routinely warns of a “red-green” alliance between liberals and violent Islamist terrorists.  But the people behind a website called “Target of Opportunity” (motto: “Eliminating the planet of liberals one at a time”) have taken things several steps further, creating a “Hit List” profiling supposed liberal enemies of America.

“This website is a list and record of people that betray and endanger America by their Seditious, Treasonous, and/or Terrorist activities,” its homepage reads. “Operating under the false illusion of Peaceful and Non-Violent activism, their methods are anything but Peaceful and Non-Violent. These people present a serious threat to all Americans. Each and every one of them should be considered a “TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY.” ( continue to full post… )

American Vision is a hard-line Christian Reconstruction organization whose current leader, Gary DeMar, has said that democracy should be replaced by a theocratic government run by Christians who will impose Old Testament prohibitions and the occasional executions of “sodomites” to drive gay people back into the closet. It’s no surprise, then, that American Vision has involved itself over the years with anti-gay and anti-abortion causes. ( continue to full post… )

A 2010 U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo warned that a new Minuteman-style border vigilante group had popped up in Arizona that posed “a possibility of violence between armed civilians and smugglers.”

The confidential memo — dated April 28, 2010, and leaked last Thursday by LulzSec, a group that hacked the Arizona Department of Public Safety — warned that an “unknown group” calling itself “A Concerned Citizen” was seeking recruits to help shut down a 30-mile section of Interstate 8. The idea was to create a roadblock, allegedly for the purpose of stopping any smugglers who might be traveling along the route.

“[I]t is not surprising that another contingent of Minuteman types has come to life. The tone of this information is quite unlike that of the MCDC Locked and Loaded Operation,” the memo’s author wrote, referring to Chris Simcox’s nativist extremist group Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) and appearing to suggest that the new group was even more militant. MCDC dissolved in March 2010 in part because it did not want to take legal responsibility for the potential actions of its fired-up volunteers after its leader announced a “locked and loaded” plan that encouraged volunteers to bring rifles with them to the border and “forcefully engage” the “criminals” who try to cross without documentation. ( continue to full post… )

Arizonans who fretted that the recent cancellation of Glenn Spencer’s testimony before the state Senate Border Security Committee meant that Spencer would be prevented from sharing his paranoid visions of marauding migrants can rest easy. Even if Spencer never makes it to the Senate, interested senators are going to see Spencer — and so can everyday citizens wanting to hear the hate group leader’s nativist propaganda straight from the source.

Visits to Spencer’s Cochise County ranch, including a tour and a briefing from Spencer, are being sponsored by the Arizona 2012 Project, an affiliate of the Tea Party Patriots. The Maricopa County Republican Committee promotes upcoming tour dates on its website.

During the most recent tour Saturday, two Republican Arizona state senators, Sylvia Allen and Al Melvin, were among the approximately 50 people that Spencer estimated visited his ranch on Saturday, Spencer reported on his website. Allen, who chairs the state Senate Border Security Committee, had initially invited Spencer to testify about border issues in March. The hate group leader was disinvited after the two Democrats on the committee sent Allen a public letter requesting that his appearance be cancelled because of his “divisiveness” and “hatred.” ( continue to full post… )

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer last Thursday signed into law a bill authorizing herself and future Arizona governors to deploy an “Arizona State Guard” at any time and for any reason she sees fit. This state guard – in essence, a kind of all-volunteer militia that is immune from being federalized – would be a force that can be “activated” to do much of the same work that the National Guard does.

Republican State Rep. Jack Harper, who co-sponsored the bill and has been pushing the issue since Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano was governor of Arizona, told newspapers he hoped to see the militia established immediately and used to patrol the U.S.-Mexican border for undocumented immigrants. Arizona has already been the subject of much controversy around its harshly anti-immigrant policies, especially the S.B. 1070 law that critics say subjects all Latinos in the state to racial profiling and is currently held up in the federal courts.

Harper is not the only one enthused about the new law. Now comes a campaign — apparently led by an extremist nativist hardliner once sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center — to push Brewer into activating the guard immediately. ( continue to full post… )

Shawna Forde, the anti-immigrant vigilante leader who orchestrated the murder of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter, will receive the death penalty, a Pima County, Ariz., jury decided today.

The decision is binding on the judge hearing the case.

The case of Forde, a one-time member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps who went on to found her own Minuteman American Defense (MAD) group, didn’t get much attention from the national mainstream media. But among immigrant rights groups, Forde has become a symbol of the vicious hatreds that seems to lie just beneath the surface of the contemporary nativist movement. Forde targeted the family in the hope of stealing money to fund her MAD organization. ( continue to full post… )

Concluding a three-week trial that exposed the most unsavory side of Arizona’s militant border vigilante movement, a jury on Monday found Shawna Forde guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the May 2009 killings of Raul Flores, 29, and his 9-year-old daughter in the border town of Arivaca, Ariz.

The jury deliberated for seven hours over two days before reaching a guilty verdict Monday. On Tuesday morning, after hearing arguments from both sides, they unanimously pronounced Forde eligible for the death penalty. They cited the facts that Forde was motivated by money, participated actively in the robbery, and intended the murders to take place as factors that warrant the ultimate punishment.

It is now up to Pima County Superior Court Judge John Leonardo, who presided over Forde’s trial, to review all the arguments and evidence and determine whether Forde should be executed or sentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors said Forde, head of the border vigilante group Minuteman American Defense (MAD), and two accomplices – MAD Operations Director Jason Eugene “Gunny” Bush, 34, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, a local MAD member – planned the May 30 home invasion because they thought they would find drugs and cash to fund their group’s operation. According to prosecutors, the three broke into the victims’ trailer, where Bush shot Flores, his wife, Gina Gonzalez, and their daughter Brisenia. Gonzalez, who survived, managed to return fire with her own gun. “Oh my God,” she can be heard shouting on a 911 tape. “I can’t believe they killed my family.” Bush and Gaxiola will each be tried separately this spring. ( continue to full post… )