Armed citizen militias are patrolling on their own around Kinney County, on the Texas-Mexico border, to intimidate and detain migrants trying to enter the United States illegally.
These
vigilante
patrols
participate in a new offensive by the Texas authorities to arrest undocumented people, accusing them of trespassing on private property, and have even received support from local sheriffs, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Its members have indicated that they intend to detain the migrants and then hand them over to local authorities, although at the moment it is unknown if they have managed to intercept any.
According to
the average quoted, Brad Coe, sheriff of Kinney County, has spent months in contact
with a group of men wearing bulletproof vests and carrying rifles
to patrol the border.
These groups seek to catch migrants to hand them over to the authorities.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
The sheriff even went out on patrol with these
guards
, using an aerial reconnaissance drone, and claims that he has tried to partner with private security companies for this work.
"The premise behind all of this is that if [migrants] know they will be arrested, they will go elsewhere," Coe explained.
Local authorities and migrant support organizations have expressed concern that armed civilians are acting as agents of the law.
On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and nine other organizations
filed a complaint with the Justice Department
, asking it to investigate the Texas state agencies and local governments involved.
Travis Considine, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said his agency does not support association with such groups.
"We don't want to work with [militias], but we don't control the sheriffs," he said.
Samuel Hall, leader of the North Texas-based Patriots for America militia, said his group patrols public property, but promised he would not forcibly arrest anyone because it would be illegal, even though its members are heavily armed.
Of the 2,000 arrests made by state troopers under the
Operation Lone Star program,
the majority have occurred in Kinney County.
