Minuteman Leader Allegedly Kills 9-Year-Old And Father To Finance Hate Group
Minuteman Leader Allegedly Kills 9-Year-Old And Father To Finance Hate Group
This weekend, Shawna Forde, 41, leader of the Minuteman American Defense (M.A.D.) group and two of her associates were arrested in connection with the murder of a 9-year-old girl, Brisenia Flores, and her father, Raul, in Arivaca, AZ. Local police are reporting that Forde and her posse broke into the Flores home dressed as law enforcement officers looking for money and drugs to finance her border watch group with the intention of leaving no witnesses behind.
Much like Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project and Chris Simcox’s Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Forde’s group is an extreme nativist organization made up of volunteer border vigilantes. M.A.D. has gone into damage control, posting a statement expressing condolences for the Flores family and distancing itself from Forde’s violent crime. Yet directly below its offering of “deepest regrets,” the website boasts a message from Shawna Forde, Executive Director:
“I would like to let everyone know that we are in full operation we have people coming from Florida and other parts of the country to assist in gathering exclusive footage of drug cartel drug smuggling and humane trafficking…We will expose and report what we know and find, we will recruit the serious and train the revolutionist, time for words have passed the time for bravery and conviction are now. I shall lead you to challenge yourself and your American heart into the future of what was once a great country and will be again but at what price?“
Other border vigilante groups are disassociating themselves from Forde and M.A.D. However, the Anti-Defamation League points out that many of them have publicly supported her anti-immigrant statements in the past. On three different occasions, Forde claimed to have been shot, raped, and beaten by Spanish-speaking assailants. Most inside her own anti-immigrant community questioned her credibility and accused her of faking the attack, but some, like Minuteman Project Executive Director Stephen Eichler stood by her, saying:
“I believe what I have been told, and the reports I have read in the newspaper, to be factual and accurate…I may be called gullible, sucker, and naïve, but it is of little consequence to me if I am right and the victims were comforted.”
Laine Lawless, an anti-immigration activist who started the group Border Guardians, praised Forde’s border activities and argued that Forde’s alleged attack was “obvious proof that the reach of the Mexican cartels extends way beyond the borders of Mexico deep into the United States.” After the Flores family murder, Minuteman in-fighting has lead the San Diego Minuteman to blame The Minuteman Project’s Jim Gilchrist for continuing to support Forde, who served as Gilchrist’s 2008-2009 Border Director, “despite warnings.”
Finger pointing aside, what all of these groups have in common is that they target individual immigrants rather than immigration policies. Their mission and rhetoric consistently fits the description of “rightwing extremist groups” that the DHS report warned have “the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence” in part due to pent-up “frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration.” Forde’s alleged murder comes shortly after a white supremacist shooting rampage in Pittsburgh, an abortion doctor murder in Kansas, and a racially-motivated shooting at the Holocaust Museum that have caused some to “herald a disturbing surge in U.S. hate crimes.”
And now, the trigger-man who allegedly acted at her direction and killed both victims, will face a DNA-matched second degree murder charge in eastern Washington for the 1997 killing of Hector Lopez Partida, a Hispanic man then living in Wenatchee. For anyone doing the math, this homicide took place before the self proclaimed Iraq war and ’special forces’ operative joined the US Army. If, in fact, he ever did, or is what he has claimed to be. How prescient that Department of Homeland Security advisory now seems…
17 Responses to “Minuteman Leader Allegedly Kills 9-Year-Old And Father To Finance Hate Group”
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And now, the trigger-man who allegedly acted at her direction and killed both victims, will face a DNA-matched second degree murder charge in eastern Washington for the 1997 killing of Hector Lopez Partida, a Hispanic man then living in Wenatchee.
For anyone doing the math, this homicide took place before the self proclaimed Iraq war and ’special forces’ operative joined the US Army. If, in fact, he ever did, or is what he has claimed to be.
How prescient that Department of Homeland Security advisory now seems…
June 15th, 2009 at 5:51 pmIs there anyone the right won’t kill to get their way?
June 15th, 2009 at 5:52 pmThat woman is really screwed up. I like how Laine’s last name is “Lawless.” Is that some sort of joke?
June 15th, 2009 at 6:06 pmI can’t believe that she may have done this as a fund raising tactic for the minutemen. Sick.
June 15th, 2009 at 6:26 pmyet there is no coverage of this in any major media so far.
June 15th, 2009 at 6:42 pmThis is the climate that arpayaso and the Arizonian government is creating. It is a shame it has come to this point and people still dont see that things have come to far. By the time we decide to put stop to racism it will be too late. Now people racism is even admired and used as a call to action.
Why do we hurt each other so much?
June 15th, 2009 at 8:40 pmwhy the hell isn’t something like this the lead story on the six o’clock news.what a brain dead media,liberal my ass…
June 16th, 2009 at 2:03 pmkevin knapp Says:
“why the hell isn’t something like this the lead story on the six o’clock news.what a brain dead media,liberal my ass”
Incredibly well put. I guess violence against minorities, legal or illegal, just doesn’t get the ratings.
I bet you never will see this on Lou Dobbs show.
June 16th, 2009 at 2:16 pmKevin Knapp said it all! Thanks, Mr Knapp.
June 16th, 2009 at 2:18 pmThe website Immigrationclearinghouse.org brought to the public questions about this womans alleged “rape” and did further followup’s that were generally ignored.
The Police in Everett Washington waited until it was “convenient” for Forde to be questioned in all the incidents she was involved in.
Things might have been different if people had paid attention
June 16th, 2009 at 2:18 pmThis whole situation is so sad. What did this country expect putting a bunch of overzealous bigots on the border? Hopefully this administration will investigate and take down these vigilante groups.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:40 pm“This country” did NOT put those vigilantes on the border/s. They put themselves there, in keeping with the white supremacist “movement,” the anti-choice “movement,” and the gun-nuts who “defend” the rule of law by rejecting the rule of law.
All in all these are ineducable paranoids whose position is beyond fact-free to America-hating. Where did Forde’s predecessors come from? They were immigrants.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:32 pmWhere I come from people like Forde are referred to as IWT (Ignorant White Trash.) As if her actions and hateful rhetoric weren’t enough to earn her membership in that “club”, we also have her statement, in which she decries “humane trafficking.” If ignorance is bliss, that piece of IWT must be in seventh heaven.
June 16th, 2009 at 4:48 pmShe’s upset that we’re spending “$500 million” on illegal immigration, yet she is not counting the contribution illegal immigrants make + money the State pays for court fees for having to go through trial + money spent keeping prisoners locked up. She’s the one hurting our budget, not the Flores family.
Either way, killing for money? I guess our country was founded on those values.
June 16th, 2009 at 9:54 pmI am hesitant to disbelieve a woman’s story of physical abuse but Forde’s story is a little too convenient to be believable. So, she should be charged, after an investigation shows she made up the story for political capital, with making a false police report, possibly enhanced pursuant to hate crime legislation, and given an appropriate prison term so she can think about what she is doing. Vigilantism is simply criminal behavior and should be treated as such. Congress should immediately clarify the law that immigration laws cannot be enforced by private citizens but only by duly authorized officers of the federal government.
June 16th, 2009 at 11:22 pmFAIR says they never had any connection to Forde. Will Andrea Nill be issuing a correction to the above?
June 17th, 2009 at 12:53 pmFAIR didn’t feel the need to issue this statement at any point in the three intervening years before Ms Forde became an accused murderer.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:41 am