Patriots Border Alliance Accused of Lies and Neo-Nazi Ties
It鈥檚 been a bad month at Black Rock for the , a border vigilante group formed last year by disgruntled former Minuteman Civil Defense Corps officials.
First Phoenix New Times blogger Stephen Lemons unearthed a of Patriots Border Alliance leaders and members posing with a wheelchair-bound Elton Hall, a septuagenarian neo-Nazi and past Arizona organizer for George Lincoln Rockwell鈥檚 American Nazi Party who still frequently attends racist skinhead festivals and anti-immigration demonstrations in the Phoenix area. Hall was injured in February when he was struck by a car while participating in a Patriots Border Alliance-sponsored protest outside a day labor center. The photo of him surrounded by adoring Patriots Border Alliance activists was posted on the group鈥檚 website accompanied by this caption: 鈥淧ATRIOTS BORDER ALLIANCE HONORING ELTON HALL: In appreciation for your service, devotion, commitment to securing American border and promoting THE RULE OF LAW.鈥�
Three days after the Hall photo surfaced, the El Paso Times ran a in which Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier debunked several outlandish claims made by Patriots Border Alliance president Bob Wright at a recent meeting of the far-right Eagle Forum in Alamagordo, N.M.
At that meeting, Wright claimed that he鈥檇 been shocked during one recent mission on the Texas border when he鈥檇 spotted 鈥渉undreds鈥� of people massed on the Mexican side of the line, waiting to cross.
Mosier told the Times, 鈥淲e have never seen anything like that, nor have we even heard of anything like that.鈥�
Wright also repeated the common border vigilante legend about 鈥渞ape trees鈥� on the border (Wright called them 鈥渟ex trees鈥�), to which women are supposedly tied and gang-raped by Mexican bandits.
鈥淎gain, we have never heard or seen such a thing,鈥� Mosier said. 鈥淚 am sure if this was factual, we would have at least heard something about it. 鈥� We know that some [women] are attacked. But trees? No. That is not true.鈥�
