July 9, 2009 11:20 AM
Since the murder of a Latino man and his nine-year-old daughter by Shawna Forde, the leader of Minutemen American Defense (show left), the border patrol movement has imploded, with internecine word-wars between Minuteman factions--battles which will hopefully drive the misguided idea of vigilante border patrols toward extinction. Of course, the movement's unraveling comes at a high price: the lives of 29-year-old Raul Flores and his daughter, Brisenia, who were shot to death in their Arizona home on May 30. Beyond that, it's possible that Forde committed other crimes as well, considering that her half-brother, Merrill Metzger, told the Deseret Morning News in March that "she was sitting here talking about how she was going to start an underground militia and rob drug dealers."
These murders weren't "crime passionnel," as the French call violent acts brought about by a sudden rage (ie, a jilted lover who is swept up in the emotion of the moment). They were a chillingly logical step for someone like Forde, who was immersed in a social sphere that was pervaded by racism and ethnocentrism, who lived in a world where weapons offered a quick and easy road to empowerment. From the outset of the Minuteman movement, opposition groups have been preaching the dangers of allowing amateurs to take on responsibilities that should only be allotted to trained (and government-sanctioned) border patrol agents. But until this tragedy, many politicians and reporters were content to ignore the Minutemen: just a bunch of gun-crazy loonies who spent too much time in the sun. And it wasn't strange for some prominent conservatives to support Minuteman initiatives. Major Republican candidates were battling for Minuteman endorsements during the last election, unperturbed by the potential for violence that is ingrained in the movement's central ethos.
There were plenty of clues as to the potential danger of the Minuteman model: the dehumanization of illegal immigrants as literal and figurative targets; the sometimes overt anti-Latino sentiment (one of Forde's Minuteman recruits said she even objected to members of her organization eating Mexican food); the amateurish vigilantism (see this video, where Forde carries a handgun in her waistband, a fashion statement favored by other armed-and-reckless messes, like ex-Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress). All these warning signs--often cited by Minuteman opposition--went largely unanswered by lawmakers and big media, the way a stubborn diabetic might ignore a doctor's plea to cut out sugars before he or she loses a limb.
Now, as I read about the exploits of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, I can't help but compare his ideological moorings to the poisonous roots of the Minuteman movement. Arpaio has been called out for blatantly profiling Latinos in Maricopa County, which he polices, along with treating inmates in a degrading fashion. Now, after years of allowing Arpaio to profile suspected immigrants by ethnicity, the effects of his actions are starting to become brutally obvious. A July 7 story in The Arizona Republic said the white population in Maricopa prisons has declined over the past five years (after growing steadily for more than a decade), with Hispanic males now constituting the ethnic majority among inmates.
It's not a far stretch to see the relationship between Arpaio's immigration raids and increased incarceration of Latinos--during the sheriff's immigration sweeps people are routinely picked up and jailed for crimes unrelated to immigration. The article quotes Soler Meetze, the executive director of the Arizona ACLU, who said that "these numbers don't represent a pattern of crime, they reflect a pattern of enforcement." In other words, Arpaio's policing is bound to send more Latinos to jail, regardless of the actual amount of serious crimes being committed in the neighborhoods that he targets..
Beyond his racist profiling, Arpacio's treatment of prisoners has been degrading and abhorrent. The New York Times has spoken out against this, citing incidents where the sheriff had inmates who were awaiting deportation shackled, garbed in black-and-white striped clothes, and then marched in front of television cameras--a scene where dehumanization seemed the first and foremost objective. If you're not familiar with Arpaio, take a few minutes to watch this ABC News segment:
The scary part (if you aren't scared already), is that not only is Arpaio harming the Latino communities where his raids take place, and the immigrant inmates that he treats so inhumanely, he's creating an environment where someone like Shawna Forde might thrive. In Arpaio's universe, like that of the Minutemen, the Fordes of the world can find someone to blame for the struggling economy, crime problems, seemingly sudden changes in their quality of life. These are the sort of false philosophies that extremists like Forde latch onto and propagate.
Sally Kohn touched on this in her June 16 article, "The Bloody Truth Behind Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric" on Huffington Post:
Many well-meaning, average Americans who have understandable concerns about our economy and how they're going to support their families have been convinced that anti-immigrant organizations are on their side and feel their pain. But the reality is, organizations like the Minutemen and FAIR are only co-opting our economic insecurity (an insecurity that's actually shared by immigrants and citizens alike) to mask their real agenda, motivated purely by hatred for those who are different.
It was the same thing in Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler started by talking about how Jews were threatening the German economy and should all be expelled from the country. And then he killed six million.
Just as overblown Minuteman rhetoric was bound to lead to an act as horrible as Shawna Forde's murderous attacks, you can't help but imagine that Arpaio's actions in Maricopa County might result in something equally terrible. Let's hope we stop him before that moment comes.