The “Take Our Border Back” convoy keeps on trucking towards Eagle Pass, Texas, but the momentum and size of the group is far from what organizers hoped for.
In case you weren’t aware: At a spot in Eagle Pass, the state of Texas installed razor wire along its border with Mexico. Despite a record number of migrants stopped at the border, the state of Texas insists the U.S. government has left the vast area between Texas and Mexico basically undefended. Therefore, the state had to install potentially deadly fencing to deter migrants fleeing violence in their country (violence from governments the U.S. largely supported.) This wire ended up prevented the U.S. Border Patrol from actually patrolling the border. The Supreme Court told the feds it could take the wire down, which it did, only for Texas to bring the wire back shortly after. The situation has become a bit of a stand off between the U.S. government and Texas, plus dozens of Republican governors around the country who have expressed support for Texas’ actions.
The rough estimate of vehicles in the convoy was “more than 40″ as of Wednesday night. On Thursday, two truckers who led portions of the convoy told Reuters that “70 to 300″ vehicles had joined, but the newswire could not independently verify those numbers. On Friday a decent crowd showed up for a rally in Texas that featured Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent, but it was still a far cry from the predicted 400,000-700,000 people organizers hoped would show up. After all, the Telegram channel devoted to the convoy only has some 4,000 users.
The convoy faces quite the uphill battle. As I’ve written before, in the U.S., it’s particularly tough to gather the kind of momentum seen in the Freedom Convoy which attacked Ottawa in 2022. This convoy reportedly only began planning three weeks ago, and involves some of the same players in the failed People’s Convoy.
In the Telegram channel, folks swing from swearing this is a peaceful protest to explicitly stating they’re going to kill migrants on the border. You will not be shocked to learn that some of the losers from the 2022 People’s Convoy are the loudest voices calling for violence. From Wired:
The organizers also repeatedly stated that the event was peaceful, though online chats in a related Telegram group show members discussing “exterminating” migrants. A known white nationalist who was kicked out of the People’s Convoy in 2022, Ryan Sanchez, is among those most active in the group. Sanchez was previously a Marine Corp reservist who says he was kicked out after he was reported to have been demonstrating alongside the Rise Above Movement, an alt-right street-fighting group that took part in the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which led to the death of one counterprotester.
“I think the Eagle Pass rally is going to be the ’main event,’” Sanchez wrote in the convoy Telegram channel. “We need to think strategically and concentrate our limited resources where they will have the greatest effect.”
Beyond those threatening violence and known white-nationalists, the cause is also resonating with the January 6 and voter fraud conspiracy theory crowds. From the Daily Beast:
“I was thrown in the Philly gulag for 21 days for asking if every vote was being counted,” Macias said. “That was just a simple question.” He then focused on the more than 70 military vets charged with storming the U.S. Capitol, calling them “hostages.”
“Yes, we are taking our border back. We also want to take our country back,” said Macias, who was acquitted of election interference but in 2023 sentenced to two years of probation on weapons charges.
[…]
A former Navy officer and co-founder of Veterans for Trump, Macias was arrested after he and a QAnon conspiracy theorist drove a Hummer with guns and ammunition from Virginia to Philadelphia. The men were also at the Capitol on Jan. 6, though Macias says he never entered the building during the riots.
Sounds like a cool guy. One user on Telegram encouraged convoy members to carry zip ties in order to restrain any provocateurs on their own side from getting anyone in trouble.
The “Take Our Border Back” convoy has been described by organizers as “god’s army” saying they’d been chosen specifically by a divine power to travel to Texas and make an already tense situation even worse. A promotional video called the border situation “…the biggest spiritual battle the world has ever seen.” Paranoia is reportedly rife within the group, with members keeping an eye out of everyone from federal agents to their favorite boogey man, ANTIFA.
The convoy is expected to reach Eagle Pass by Saturday, where they will…I don’t know exactly? Protest the U.S. government protecting its own border? Help the Texas National Guard? Probably not. As we’ve seen before, these agents of chaos are largely ineffective, with poorly defined ideals and demands.
