What It Looks Like On The Ground With The Armed, Unauthorized Militias Patrolling the Texas Border

The 1,254 mile border Texas shares with Mexico has been a divisive point for almost as long as it has been there, but is especially so now, with the media's focus on the 50,000 illegal unaccompanied South American minors our government is struggling to find a place to contain while they await processing. The border's security is a point of contention between political parties, and now arch-conservative militias are recruiting members to fuel their own legally ambiguous "patrols" with a shoot-first, ask-questions-later attitude.

San Antonio Express-News reporter Kolten Parker has been covering the militias since they first popped up. We talked to Parker about reporting on a largely unpopular group that has gone under-covered due to fear of intimidation, and how that's affected his life and reporting.

Parker: After posting my first story on the militia groups, I started getting emails almost immediately about my use of the term "anti-government." Within a few hours, some Instagram users posted a screenshot of my article and tagged my account in the comments. It made me a little nervous, because my account has photos of my family, girlfriend, and location-tagged images, so I made the account private but continued to monitor the comments. I decided I'd continue to dig into these groups because I knew it was a good story. A couple days later, I published an article about Commander Chris Davis being discharged from the Army under other than honorable conditions and changed my Instagram account back to public.

There's not many people saying this is a good thing. Democrats are obviously slamming them, the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) came out with a strong statement saying that it could have disastrous personal or public safety consequences. It is Texas. Republicans, including Rick Perry, have declined to comment on the militias. (Perry) is obviously a big figure, he's thrust himself into the debate by sending national guardsmen to the border.

What's kind of strange is that these stories have done incredibly well, and people are very interested in it, but I haven't noticed too many other reporters here reporting on it. I'm happy about it since I get to stake a claim, but…

I interviewed Chris Davis — he's like their commander — and then I had a follow up article where I dug up his military service summary. He was discharged from the army in 2001 in other than honorable conditions in lieu of a court martial. I thought that was pretty interesting. I found that after I interviewed him he "went black" because they were "worried about security threats."

"How? You see an illegal. You point your gun dead at him, right between his eyes, and you say, 'Get back across the border or you will be shot.'" - Chris Davis.

They're very… paranoid might not be the best word, but I think it gets the point across. They don't like being in the media. They think that it's a conspiracy, that we're working with the government. I don't think they're really interested in being interviewed. They take what they're doing seriously.

I found the Patriot's Information Hotline, which is a thing they use to organize and recruit people. They actually run background checks on people, or say they do. I called it once pretending to be interested in it and they asked for a name and said, "We have to make sure you don't have any felonies." But obviously they're not getting your ID or anything, you're just giving them a name, but, still, I was surprised.

They say they have ten active teams from El Paso to Laredo to the valley, which is all the way from West Texas to the southern point. I've talked to some people here in San Antonio who have ranches along the border, really large ranches, and they say that they've had people down there since 2007 on and off that they've had to ask to leave their property. They say that they're on private land with the blessing of the person who owns the ranch, but the thing is, especially the further west that you get, some people have hundreds of thousands of acres on the border. So whether the ranch owner knows or not could be up for question.

I don't know how many people are in the teams, I don't really want to guess at the number. I'll be honest, when I saw these photos it seemed like they were pretty established and I was kind of surprised. I'd been reporting on it, but it still seemed like, "Are people really doing this?"

One image I thought was very interesting was the border patrol agent leaning in the window, especially with the CBPs. They never responded to my request about that specific photo. The way I understand it, there's so many border control agents, they've had to beef up so much in the past few years, that I guess the quality could have dropped a little.

"(Rules of Engagement state that) if in fear of bodily injury, weapons free, if fired upon, return fire. Real simple," member KC Massey posted along with a photo on Facebook. "We are not worried about an 'International' incident if they shoot at us."

Our border reporter is a lot more familiar with this stuff. He said that these guys look like hit crews that would rob coyotes or smugglers when they come across the border. They have masks on, and guns. There's a very likely possibility that you might have some lookout see these guys and call some muscle to come up and deal with it. Then you'd have a firefight.

I think social media – the Facebook pages these guys are hooking up to all across the country for people with these specific political views – that's what really allows them to organize. Some of these people aren't from Texas, they're coming from out of state.