Editor’s Note (2025): This article was originally published March 12, 2019. Much of the information in this post is now out-of-date and the views of the author have evolved significantly in the last 6-and-a-half years. It is shared here as a piece of archival material, with minimal edits.
The Border Context
The history of militia border patrols, especially for those traveling from elsewhere, isn’t new. For example, one of the most prominent militias, the Mountain Minutemen (or just the Minutemen), has been doing this stuff for a decade. Robert Crooks is their leader and has some sketchy ties to the US neo-Nazi movement through his pal Harry Hughes. These militias have been written about often and well, so there’s not a lot more that I can add on this subject. Instead, I’m going to offer a glimpse into some of the resulting effects 4–6 months after the ‘caravan’ scare of 2018.
The ‘Trafficking Camp’, the SEAL, and the VOP Hydra
Remember #OperationBackyardBrawl?
If you don’t, here’s a quick overview: a group calling themselves “Veterans on Patrol” (VOP) found what they believed to be a child trafficking camp near Tuscon, AZ. Needless to say, they turned out to be wrong.
In the summer of 2018, VOP folks were wandering around near Tuscon looking for homeless vets and found a camp they were suspicious about. They looked up the owner of the land this “camp” was on, and it was leased to a Mexican company whose CEO had recently been mysterious murdered.
The VOP, led by Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer (who is, incidentally, not a veteran), released countless videos of “holding cells”, trees with “restraints” on them, and a box of hair dye. A former Navy SEAL even came to the site to investigate and offered his opinion that it all looked very real, too. This same SEAL reversed his previous position after viewing police reports that said there was no evidence that the camp was used for trafficking. The camp, in all likelihood, was an encampment used by homeless folks in the area who built makeshift shelters to avoid the hot Arizona sun.
The VOP has a few public militia “companies”. The first one, “Alpha Co — Pulaski” was formed literally a day before Lewis happened upon the notorious trafficking camp. There is also “Charlie Co — Team Rodriguez”, which is currently used as the main media channel for all of the VOP. Bravo Co and Delta Co are sometimes mentioned, with the latter apparently being involved in border operations, but there’s no clear evidence that either exists as distinct units (nor does it appear that any unit beyond Charlie is active).
Meyer is no stranger to controversy. Beyond founding and leading a group called “Veterans on Patrol” despite never enlisting, Arthur was an instigator of drama at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff in 2016. Arthur brought a crew from Arizona to Burns, OR to attempt to remove a pro-Bundy militant from the compound. Meyer was kicked out of the previous 2014 Bundy camp after placing glow sticks in an occupation parking log and claiming that a drone strike was imminent. This earned him the nickname “Screwy Louie” in some Patriot circles.
Meyer, under his pseudonym Louis Arthur, has gone by many other names, too, including “Louie Prepper” and his full name, Michael Lewis Arther Meyers. Lewis Arthur is his most used, and the one associated directly with VOP.
In many ways, VOP was a massive grift. One of the most evident ways that this is shown is through the volume of gift cards that the VOP was receiving during their time in the viral spotlight (in large part thanks to the former SEAL boosting Arthur’s conspiracy). VOP is not legally a charity and never filed with the state to allow them to use the term “Veteran” when asking for donations. This is why they asked for gift cards. However, some gift cards, like the VISA gift card in the image above, can very easily be converted to cash.
“#OperationBackYardBrawl” is still sometimes used by VOP followers to refer to current VOP border operations, despite that operation technically ending. Another interesting hashtag appears in connection with a lot of VOP traffic, though, and it’s that of “#WW1WGA”, or “Where We Go One, We Go All”, a phrase used at the end of most posts by the conspiracy pilot QAnon.
The conspiracy associated with QAnon has been going for months at this point and relies pretty heavily on pointing out strange coincidences to get their audience’s conspiracy brains churning. It’s unsurprising to see these communities bleeding into one another, but remarkable to see how accepted QAnon has become at a high level for the VOP.
Just like Meyer, the VOP has had multiple renamings and filters through a series of spinoff organizations. The Arizona Desert Guardians (AZDG), for example, have said they are separate from the VOP and no longer work under the VOP chain of command or organizational umbrella. However, the VOP operates under the “Walking for the Fallen Ministry” (or WFTF Ministry). WFTF media still claims to oversee both the VOP and the AZDG, and the associated MFTF YouTube channel posts many of their videos. The VOP also asked for all donated materials that people were considering sending to the VOP to instead be sent to the AZDG. It’s hardly a split that seems to mean anything.
Another interesting VOP “spinoff” organization is the Arizona Border Recon (AZBR), which itself claims to not be a militia. This is an interesting claim, especially given that they have posted images of themselves armed and wearing fatigues in the desert.
Regardless, the AZBR hopes to serve as an informant network for Border Patrol, installing field cameras and surveying areas of the Mexican border with a commercial drone. Despite their clear connections to militia movements on the border in Arizona, the AZBR is adamant that they are not a militia. The VOP has signed some media posts with an alphabet soup of organizations that have also included AZBR, meaning the two organizations are likely still working in tandem.
There’s a lot of strife from and for the VOP. The VOPhave criticized many other militias, including those in Arizona like the AZ State Militia, the Southern AZ Militia, and the AZ Defense Force.
Border Harassment, Q Anon at 3000+, and the Fraud
It would be easy to continue writing about the VOP, especially given just how publicity-driven their leader is. However, there’s another militia I want to focus on for this piece.
This is the United Constitutional Patriots, or the UCP. The UCP is based out of Alabama, but has a shoot-off chapter in New Mexico that will be the major focus here. This New Mexico chapter is likely only a few people, but those few people are extremely active. These UCP members spend much of their time these days posting about and discussing the Mexican border.
After arriving at the Mexican border near Sunland Park, the leader of UCP, calling himself Johnny Horton Jr, said that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) welcomed them, told them they were welcome to camp at the border.
“We talked to Border Patrol, and they said they needed help. They needed eyes,” Horton said. He told CBP that the UCP “didn’t even hear a dog bark” after a night of watching the border where they arrived, but claimed that caravans were surely on the way soon.
The UCP has a “radio show” that they broadcast on YouTube a few times a week. It’s a screencast of a Discord chat involving usually 8 members of UCP. According to the most recent cast on 11 March 2019, UCP could have up to 80 members who have had any access to the Discord, including 2 admins, 4 staff, and 4 members who are usually online during casts. The same 8 individuals who usually take part in the radio show are seen across a lot of UCP media, including their “incident” uploads that show them harassing a few poor people on the border. 70 members of the Discord chat were offline during the radio show.
Two of the more long-winded members of the chat, PREACHER and nuclear_warrior, often go through speeches on QAnon releases (the March 11 broadcast featured the 3019th post by Q) or concerns about the “Cabal”, a popular topic of QAnon followers. The Q conspiracy is broad-reaching, influencing not only the leadership VOP but also that of the UCP.
The UCP claims to have assisted in apprehending “over 3000” people trying to cross the border in a little over two weeks. According to key AZDG leader Rebecca “Becky” Ferland, AZDG joined UCP at the border after this claim was made publicly. With this claim, UCP said there was a massive caravan of immigrants headed for the border the second week of March 2019.
While visiting the UCP, Becky and her crew were not allowed to go out on operations and had to sneak out of the host militia’s encampment to “gather intel” themselves. (A response from UCP talked extensively about Becky’s claim that there was no place for her to use the restroom, with UCP Media Officer viper discussing the group’s Port-A-Potties at length).
In a stream on Facebook Live, Becky detailed the ineptitude of the UCP at the border and encouraged her listeners to not donate any money to the UCP cause, of which there are massive financial asks currently for things like ATVs. Becky also discussed some of the claims put forward by the UCP folks she interacted with, who told her that cartels had facial recognition technology to dissuade her from leaving camp.
Becky said she and the AZDG squad came to the border because of a call from right-wing activists Gavin Clarkson (of New Mexico State University) and Anthony Aguero (of Border Network News). Aguero, like Becky, also streamed his distaste with the UCP, claiming that he felt he was “duped”, and that “some things were not adding up”.
Another border media activist, Paul “DarkSkyWatcher (DSW)” Flores, also went to the border to investigate the UCP’s operation. He claimed that he had a “journalist down there undercover”, who almost certainly seems to have been AZDG’s Becky. It seems as if Flores was skeptical of the claims of apprehension of “2000 migrants that have come through [Sunland Park]”. According to DSW’s correspondence with Border Patrol, UCP is only on the border as observers and has no shared communications line with Border Patrol. Border Patrol often says they are not working with any militias, because doing so is technically illegal. However, CBP have been caught working with militias in the past, so it’s more than likely that practice continues today.
The UCP was founded by and is currently led by a man calling himself Johnny Horton, Jr., a “traditional country music artist”. Johnny Horton, Jr. has a few videos of his country music online, many of which are either different versions of his song “The Green Beret” or ‘duets’ featuring Johnny Horton, Jr. and “his dad”, famous country star, Johnny Horton. Many of his videos have footage or pictures of soldiers and American flags superimposed over him performing live.
Despite his claims to be the son of Johnny Horton, this UCP’s Johnny Horton, Jr. bears no relation to the deceased performer.
In reality, UCP’s Horton is legally named Larry Mitchell Hopkins, and he is from Oregon. Larry Hopkins uses “Johnny Horton Jr” as a stage name and as a pseudonym for his militia work.
He was arrested in Tennessee in 2010 and booked under this true name. Family members of the real Johnny Horton claim that Horton never named a child after himself. There are also rumors that Larry Hopkins claimed he was Elvis Presley’s cousin, or at least tried to work as an Elvis impersonator.
Becky, in her video following her involvement with UCP, said that Johnny claimed to be a 5-star general. This is also clearly not true, as there are only 9 5-star generals ever in the US. Becky also says that Johnny kept checking his phone and telling her that he had accidentally just missed a call or a text from President Trump. It appears that the head of the UCP has difficulty not making things up.
Splits and Trump’s Tweets
The AZDG-UCP feud has caused yet another split in the American militia movement, an already factional and largely suspicious field. Not only are these groups competing for donated resources and territory, but they are also competing for legitimacy. Recall that the VOP was redirecting its funding and material support towards AZDG, a group that had established itself as one of the core border militias in operation. It’s, therefore, no surprise that Becky and other AZDG members (who post hour-long videos almost every day) feel threatened by the new players on the block, the UCP.
The space in which these militias operate is rife with rumors, too. Some rumors are passed along in forums, others are spread through the QAnon conspiracy. Others still are likely propagated within the field by militia members against other militias or militia members. For example, many militia movement supporters at one point seemed to have thought that the UCP was funded by the right wing’s favorite dog-whistle boogeyman, George Soros.
UCP has enjoyed some level of ascendency when it comes to the current border operations that these types of militias are engaged in. This is partially due to the near-daily posting by UCP members “apprehending” migrants on the border. This really means they’re standing by looking scary while some poor family is talked to by Border Patrol. These streams have drawn an audience who view, share, and donate.
Johnny Horton, Jr. has also been able to manipulate media to aggrandize his own cause. Johnny and company often talk about how proud they are that the UCP was featured in a prominent El Paso newspaper. This feature has become something that they internally mention when discussing criticism they have received in the last few weeks. Johnny’s own grandiose claims about how many migrants they are stopping have caught the eye of some of the more established players in the field, who were even willing to travel a state over to disprove his claims.
It’s also of note to discuss the role that Donald Trump has played in a lot of this drama. Trump’s continuing pressure over the border wall has drawn new attention from players in the militia field. Many posts by militia members, right-wing activists, and folks just posting from their homes in Michigan or Florida include the hashtag #BuildTheWall. Johnny’s constant claim of having a direct line to Trump is really important to him and is levied as if it gives him legitimacy.
In many other documentable cases, Trump’s rhetoric (and specifically his tweets) have been seen to drive his supporters to act. The border is no different, as Trump’s fearmongering around the “caravan” in 2018 riled up all sorts of militia folks, resulting in the US Army identifying militia movements as a critical threat to US border operations.
This previous ‘caravan’ scare has had a series of rippling effects even into today. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) had a great article last November about how that 2018 caravan was “tearing the border militia movement apart”, and they were absolutely right. That this mistrust has continued and spawned an array of new rumors of new ‘armed caravans’ has further driven a wedge in between some of these radical actors.
It’s hard to work with counterfactuals in these cases because they are just that — counterfactuals — but one starts to wonder how things in the border militia movement might have been different if Trump hadn’t been making this border such a focus of his rhetoric. It has attracted a new wave of touristic (or maybe just opportunistic) militia operations along the border, providing not only experience “defending America” but also giving militia members an excuse to walk around in their rigs and harass migrants. Beyond that, too, it’s pretty obvious that these border operations have been fruitful financially for those involved in them, as requests for gear continue to pour out from folks involved in these operations.