Border Vigilantes are Blurring the Lines of Law Enforcement

[Nevilledog]

https://www.texasobserver.org/border-vigilantes-law-enforcement-texas-arizona/


It was late afternoon when a small group traveling in a white Ford F-150 approached a humanitarian aid camp near Sasabe, a remote Arizona community along the U.S.-Mexico border. The visitors walked among tents, blue tarps, and nonperishable food—surveying the camp and filming its occupants. The uninvited guests, who appeared to have left their firearms in the pickup, aimed cameras at immigrants who dotted the cluttered encampment; some had traveled thousands of miles to reach the United States.

Humanitarian workers with the Arizona-based advocacy group No More Deaths immediately confronted them: “This man is filming. He’s refused to stop,” one volunteer told migrants clustered nearby. The camera continued to pan across the camp. Only when an aid worker again implored them to leave did the group begin to move. As he left, the leader—a 27-year-old man by the name of Cade Lamb—audibly accused volunteers of “aiding and abetting false asylum-seekers.”

Soon after, the video appeared in a fundraising email for Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, a longshot U.S. Senate candidate in the July GOP primary—and Cade’s father. In a campaign Instagram post, Sheriff Lamb said he’d sent his son to film the camp. “Look at all these military age men! … Does this not look like a terrorist camp right here on our southern border?” he exclaimed, echoing inflammatory slogans used by other right-wing politicians to target charities that serve immigrants in Arizona and Texas.

Cade Lamb is the founder of the Sonoran Asset Group—one of various vigilante organizations that target aid workers and migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border.

*snip*

[B.See]

1. What law? MAGAS only believe in

Their laws, their orders.

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[Arne]

3. Did they wear brown shirts?

[Celerity]

4. Pinal Sheriff Mark Lamb's office spent $200K on guns and ammo from an 'inmate welfare' fund

Criminal justice experts holding the U.S. Senate candidate accountable say it’s against state law for Lamb’s Pinal County Sheriff’s Office to divert money raised by incarcerated people and families paying for jail commissary items and phone calls

https://azluminaria.org/2023/09/29/pinal-sheriff-mark-lambs-office-spent-200k-on-guns-and-ammo-from-an-inmate-welfare-fund/



The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office run by U.S. Senate candidate Sheriff Mark Lamb has spent at least $217,000 from a jail commissary fund that Arizona lawmakers mandated be used “for the benefit and welfare of inmates” to instead buy a cache of weapons, ammunition and ballistic vests. The purchases violate state law, criminal justice experts say. Arizona Luminaria reviewed expenses and revenues from the sheriff’s office inmate welfare fund over a five-year period. From July 2018 to July 2023, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office spent just over $4 million for inmate services. At least $217,000 of that, or about 5.5%, was spent on guns, bullets and vests for the law enforcement agency, according to county budget documents obtained via a public records request.

Over the same five years, the county spent less than $900 on books for people detained in the jail. The weapons and ballistic vests were purchased in 2022 and 2023. The ammunition was purchased between 2019 and 2021. Lamb began serving as Pinal County sheriff in January 2017. Jared Keenan, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, criticized spending by the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office under Lamb’s leadership. “It’s pretty clear he’s using these funds in a way that runs afoul of the statute,” Keenan told Arizona Luminaria. “The fund is for the benefit of inmates.” Money raised by people who are incarcerated purchasing items from a jail commissary or canteen or paying for phone calls may be used “for the education and welfare of inmates,” according to the state statute.

Lamb boasts he’s running a law and order campaign as the Republican Senate candidate who will secure the border, defend the Second Amendment, support police and “cut wasteful spending,” according to his website. He often appears in campaign ads and at community appearances wearing tactical gear, and in one ad he’s walking through the desert carrying a rifle. Lamb did not respond to detailed questions about his sheriff’s office spending on weapons from the fund intended to benefit incarcerated people. ACLU’s local branch has been key in lawsuits protecting the rights of people held in Arizona prisons and immigration detention centers. Many people in Arizona jails are pre-trial detainees, meaning a court has not convicted them of any crimes. Some people sentenced to less than a year are in jail instead of prison.

Having programming and improving the basic conditions in a jail can help with recidivism rates, Keenan said. Services funded by profits from fees paid for commissary items and phone calls “can also make it less miserable” for people behind bars, he said. The state legal statute regulating the fund, he added, helps “ensure that monies are used in a way they should be.” Arizona counties use the terms “inmate services” and “inmate welfare” to describe the funds. Responding to a public records request by Arizona Luminaria, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office wrote “Inmate Welfare” at the top of the document listing expenditures, which included the weapons, ammunition and ballistic vests. In jails across the state and nation, such funds typically go toward access to the internet, books, writing supplies, recreational equipment, and various educational programs for people behind bars.

snip