Newsmax
Militia members and other concerned U.S. citizens are converging on the border town of Laredo, Texas, on Friday to create a blockade against illegal immigrants crossing into the United States, the organizer of the human chain and protest said on Newsmax TV‘s “MidPoint.”
“This will continue for days and weeks to come” and spread “to other points” along the U.S.-Mexico frontier, Barbie Rogers, founder of the Patriots Information Hotline, said in a telephone interview.
Rogers declined to give an exact head count beyond “more than 50 people” or reveal whether participants are armed, citing worries about their security.
But she said blockaders will follow the same rules of engagement as protesters in an April standoff between federal officials and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.
“Just like at the Bundy ranch, there will be no patriot out there on that line that will fire first,” Rogers said.
Her website on Wednesday posted a “call to ACTION for all Militia, III%ers, Oathkeepers, and Patriotic support personnel.”
“We are trying to contact every person and every patriot in the United States to go down and help do something the government should have done a long time ago,” Rogers said.
As for whether blockaders are carrying firearms, she said, “The situation these men are walking into — they have a very good possibility of being shot by the drug cartels down there, the gang members down there, and also by our own government down there.”
A surge of migrants from Central America, many of them unaccompanied children, has caught border officials off guard and left federal and state authorities in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico scrambling to respond.
Rogers said her organization is stepping into the fray with a message: “We’re trying to say that we the people are fed up.”
“The government promised us a wall down there years ago,” Rogers said. “The money … was supposedly given to put this wall up, and it’s not there. Where is it at? Where’s the money at? The government needs to start having accountability to the people.”
Two political analysts appearing on “MidPoint” criticized the blockade as ineffectual and potentially dangerous.
“There really is nobody who I believe rationally … could think that about 50 or so people could really stop the influx of immigration via just a simple human chain,” said liberal commentator Justin Duckham, senior Washington correspondent for Talk Radio News Service.
“Plus, you also have a situation where, if there are any bad actors and somebody gets hurt, this is going to end up to be a disaster,” he said.
“It’s not a good idea,” said conservative commentator and political strategist Erica Holloway, “and probably not as wise as making sure the people that are supposed to be doing their jobs [in immigration enforcement] are doing their jobs.”
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