Arizona Border Recon: Navigating the Implication of Civilian Led Border Patrols

Arizona Border Recon (AZBR) is a paramilitary organization that operates at the Southern U.S. border of Arizona. Led by leader Tim Foley his goals are to disrupt the flow of drug smuggling and reconnaissance of migrants crossing the border. They display propaganda about protecting the identity of the U.S. and how it has been invaded by migrant travelers crossing the border. However, still being a paramilitary organization, AZBR's mission became quite unclear and received backlash from humanitarian groups, local townspeople, etc. Members can become hostile and treat migrants harshly as paramilitary organizations have had past incidences of extreme government overthrow. In coordination with this thesis, scholarships such as Greg Grandin's End of Myth showcased how the frontier expansion was only a myth when people started to be concerned with national identity. Grandin's scholarship helps picture the evolutions of how groups such as AZBR came about. Harel Shapira's Waiting for Jose covers the personalities and explores the motivations behind the volunteers in the Minutemen which is a civilian-led border patrol organization. Shapira had taken the time to witness these patrols document the experiences and help get a deep dive into what makes volunteers take a role in these types of operations. Parson's Patrolling the Homeland is another piece of scholarship that accounts to the multifaceted challenges and motivations of members patrolling the border. Parsons seems to reason that there may be a sign of societal unease within these groups which prompts them to fear the "cultural other." These backgrounds of previous scholarships and early beginnings of what is known to be paramilitary organizations underlie the sequence of events that shape AZBR today. Foley claims to be filling a void left by federal agencies trying to manage the border situation and that his services are duly needed. The problem is that AZBR's actions operate in a major gray area where members can lash out at migrants and may be conveying a message meant to harm migrants. Stories about townspeople having run-ins with militia activists and displaying their hostility create a poor example of Foley's operations on the border. The idea that migrants who are just lost and are trying to seek asylum or work seems to be the norm across the border. Rarely do drug traffickers seem to show up most of the time as Foley claims to be fighting off. As a result, AZBR fits into the product of national identity and right-wing political movement.