Texas Looks At Goon Squads, Oklahoma Sheriff Wants To Bring Back Lynchings
Texas may soon set up legal goon squads to track down migrants while in neighboring Oklahoma there was talk among a sheriff and his staff about killing journalists and bringing back lynching.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Vigilantism is nothing new in the U.S. while lynching was the preferred punishment predominantly for enslaved African Americans and any red-blooded MAGA man or woman knows that fake news is the enemy.
In Texas, a hard right wing state Republican representative proposed creating a new, “Border Protection Unit,” a polite euphemism for a vigilante squad. House Bill 20, sponsored by Rep. Matt Schaefer, has more than 50 Republican sponsors so far. The unit and its members would report directly to the governor as they “arrest, detain, and deter individuals crossing the border.”
Supporters hope the bill ultimately is a tool to overturn Arizona v. United States, a 2012 Supreme Court decision that struck down a similar set of policies in Arizona as unconstitutional. Republicans in Texas and elsewhere believe that the ruling could be reversed by a predominantly, conservative Supreme Court.
Schaefer is the founder and chair of the arch-conservative Texas Freedom Caucus. In a hearing last week, Schaefer explained the need for vigilantes as he conflated fentanyl overdoses and migration, blaming migrants for smuggling fentanyl into the country. His claims have nothing to do with reality as experts say that most fentanyl illegally trafficked into the U.S. comes not from migrants but through U.S. ports of entry, often in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens. The Customs and Border Protection agency has reported that more than 90 percent of the fentanyl trafficked into the U.S. comes through the ports and not across borders.
The bill would set up a system for deputizing “law-abiding citizens without a felony conviction” to help immigration officers. Select citizens would be “trained and specifically authorized by the governor” to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants, in other words, a posse.
Such goon squads wouldn’t have to arrest anyone to instill fear. They could set up outside churches, like Our Lady of Guadalupe in Dallas, Texas, and intimidate the 11,000 immigrants who attend mass on Sundays. The plan would open the door wide to profiling that would inevitably entangle legal U.S. citizens.
Schaefer, 47, assumed office in January 2013. Along with his far right immigration policies, he has been sharply against gun control restrictions, including universal background checks, bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazine purchases, and mandatory gun buybacks.
The Texas Freedom Caucus, led by Schaefer, wants migration to be declared an “invasion,” to establish a permanent Texas Border Defense Corp and to complete the border wall construction that ended after trump left office.
The caucus wants to bar men from competing against women in collegiate sports; “end woke indoctrination”; defund diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; ban “abusive gender procedures” on minors; remove “pornographic materials from school libraries, and ensure age safeguards in public libraries” and bolster school safety.
The group also wants to restore the felony penalty for voter fraud; establish alternative methods to prosecute voter fraud “when progressive DAs refuse” and ban counties and cities from imposing vaccine and mask mandates, or closing businesses.
A statement from the caucus said legislators are planning bills “that will impose additional civil and criminal sanctions on law firms that pay for abortions or abortion travel.” The legislation will require the state to disbar any Texas lawyer who helps someone obtain an abortion or violates any other state abortion statute. The legislation would also permit citizens to sue anyone who pays or reimburses someone for an abortion. Texas now offers a $10,000 bounty to citizens who sue abortion providers.
The Texas immigration proposal is part of a broader nationwide effort particularly in Republican states, to embolden more private citizens to enforce laws.
In South Carolina, a citizens arrest law written in the turmoil of the Civil War years, permits people to act in darkness to capture and even kill those they suspect of wrongdoing. South Carolina is one of 22 states that allow for immunity under certain self-defense circumstances. But unlike “stand your ground” laws, a citizen’s arrest can take place on public property and with only a suspicion of wrongdoing, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Vigilante movements are as American as apple pie.
An early vigilante movement was known as the Bald Knobbers who were active in the Ozark region of southwest Missouri from 1885 to 1889. They wore black horned hoods with white outlines of faces painted on them. The group got its name from the grassy bald knob summits of the nearby Ozark Mountains. The group helped law enforcement officials in the apprehension of criminals. They also punished those who violated the social and religious mores of their community.
The Ku Klux Klan, a once-powerful vigilante group, used lynching as their preferred weapon in the U.S. A total of 4,743 lynchings were reported between 1882 and 1968. Most lynchings were in southern states involving African Americans but many Native Americans were hung and Chinese residents of Western states were lynched leading to passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
In October 1977, members of the KKK marched along the 900 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico to hunt down undocumented immigrants. The Klan failed to prevent crossings but the activity primed a long history of armed vigilantism on the southern frontier.
The Minuteman Project was dedicated to expelling people who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. It was formed in August 2004 by a group who sought to extra-judicially monitor the United States–Mexico border’s flow of illegal immigrants. The group claims to have 1,200 volunteers, active in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico and Texas.
Ranch Rescue was formed in 2000 and is still a functioning organization in the southwest United States. Ranchers call upon group members to remove illegal immigrants and squatters from their property in Arizona, California, Colorado, Kentucky, New Mexico, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia.
In New Mexico, Larry Hopkins and his United Constitutional Patriots armed group rounded up and detained a large group of migrants in April 2019. The FBI said that Hopkins and others had trained to assassinate former President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
While Texans push to legitimize vigilantes, Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt wants four county officials to resign after a newspaper’s secret, audio recording apparently captured some of them complaining about the paper’s journalists and knowing hit men and where two holes are dug.
The officials include McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy and three other county officials: sheriff’s Capt. Alicia Manning, District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix. McCurtain County is in far southeast Oklahoma, bordering both Arkansas and Texas, in a part of the state often referred to as “Little Dixie,” because of the influence in the area from white Southerners who migrated there after the Civil War.
The McCurtain Gazette-News released portions of a secretly recorded audio recording following a March 6 county commission meeting. In the recording, Jennings appears to complain about not being able to hang African Americans, saying, “They got more rights than we got.”
The recording was made March 6 when a reporter left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner’s meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act
Bruce Willingham of the McCurtain Gazette-News said he believes the officials were upset about “stories we’ve run that cast the sheriff’s office in an unfavorable light,” including the death of Bobby Barrick, a Broken Bow, Okla., man who died at a hospital in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies shot him with a stun gun.
According to the Gazette, the day after the recordings were made, Willingham filed a defamation lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners.
At one point, Jennings is heard asking Manning if he could control himself regarding the news reporter.
“Oh, you’re talking about you can’t control yourself?” Jennings allegedly said.
In response, Manning allegedly said:
“Yeah, I ain’t worried about what he’s gonna do to me. I’m worried about what I might do to him. My papaw would have whipped his ass, would have wiped him and used him for toilet paper … if my daddy hadn’t been run over by a vehicle, he would have been down there.”
“I know where two big, deep holes are here if you ever need them,” Jennings allegedly said.
Clardy, the sheriff, allegedly said he had the equipment.
“I’ve got an excavator,” Clardy is accused of saying during the discussion.
“Well, these are already pre-dug,” Jennings allegedly said.
Jennings allegedly talked about knowing hitmen in Louisiana who could “cut no (expletive) mercy.”
Jennings, the commissioner, then discussed how many people might run for sheriff.
“They don’t have a goddamn clue what they’re getting into,” Jennings said. “Not this day and age. I’m going to tell you something — if it was back in the day, when Alan Marston would take a damned Black guy and whoop their (expletive) and throw them in the cell, I’d run for (expletive) sheriff.”
Jennings was referring to McCurtain County Sheriff Alan Marston, who served in the role during the 1980s.
Clardy responded by saying, “Yeah, it’s not like that no more,” the newspaper reported.
Jennings then said Black people have more rights than others, according to the Gazette.
“Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with damned rope,” he said. “But you can’t do that anymore. They’ve got more rights than we’ve got.”
Stitt had harsh words for the sheriff and staff but the governor is far from enlightened.
In April 2022, Stitt signed a law which makes performing an abortion a crime punishable by 10 years in prison or a $100,000 fine, with exceptions for medical emergencies but none for rape or incest.
Later in May, Stitt signed into law an even more restrictive bill, “banning abortions from the stage of ‘fertilization’ and allowing private citizens to sue abortion providers who ‘knowingly’ perform or induce an abortion ‘on a pregnant woman.’”
On May 7, 2021, Stitt signed a bill prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory or its gender equivalent in public schools.
In November, Stitt issued an executive order that prohibited transgender individuals from changing the gender on their birth certificates. In 2022, Stitt signed a bill that prohibited nonbinary gender markers on birth certificates.
On May 25, 2022, Stitt signed a bill into law that will require students at public charter schools and public schools to use locker rooms and bathrooms that match the sex listed on their birth certificate.
The first law Stitt signed after taking office permitted anyone 21 or older, or 18 if a member or veteran of the Armed Forces, to carry a firearm without obtaining a permit or completing training. Stitt also signed a law which expands the places a firearm may be carried to include municipal zoos and parks, regardless of size, as long as it is concealed.