Hey folks,
I saw this headline on Democracy Now! this morning:
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Immigrants Ambushed, Killed by Armed Militia in Arizona
In Arizona, two people trying to cross into the United States from Mexico have been killed in an apparent attack by an armed militia. According to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, the victims were killed when a pickup truck carrying up to 30 undocumented immigrants near the Arizona town of Eloy was ambushed by “subjects in camouflage clothing armed with rifles.” The attack comes as Arizona lawmakers are considering a measure that would create a state-backed armed militia to work with Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border to capture undocumented immigrants.
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DN makes it sound like this was an AZ civilian group, but AZ press (and ICE, of course) are saying that it was a group involved in drug trafficking:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/southwest/view/20120412gunmen_kill_two_illegal_immigrants_in_arizona/srvc=home&position=recent
http://www.azcentral.com/community/pinal/articles/2012/04/09/20120409two-killed-eloy-ambush-police-say.html
What’s most scary is the last sentence in the Democracy Now! headline, that the legislature is actually debating whether or not to create a militia to “assist” the Border Patrol (which sounds to me like a way to have plausible deniability when people get killed and the BP/state politicians don’t want people to really think they have blood on their hands).
Anyways, it’s horrifying and, if it goes anywhere, it will be interesting to see what happens.
-JJ
