Jim Benvie is a make-believe border patrol officer. In real life, he is a dangerous do-it-yourself xenophobic militia man. His belief system consists of the idea that asylum seekers at our country’s southern border should be rounded up with guns and put into cages until they can be sent back wherever ... or worse. Running with a militia group calling itself the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), Benvie and his dress-up friends have been play-acting at our New Mexico border—with guns—that they are official federal patrolmen.
In April, UCP leader Larry Hopkins, ended up in jail charged with illegal firearms possession by a felon. And in May, Benvie broke off from the UCP to form a new vigilante militia group called Guardian Patriots. On Saturday, authorities announced that Benvie and his hate-theatre troupe will have to pause their activities. Think Progress reports that Benvie was arrested in Oklahoma on two counts of impersonating an officer or an employee of the United States.
That is not all. The Daily Beast reports that in early June, Oklahoma prosecutors charged Benvie with a felony for possession of a stolen vehicle, and fraud for “attempting to obtain money by false pretenses.”
But that is still not all. Benvie was also wanted in Oklahoma after the father of a child cancer survivor contacted the authorities, saying that he recognized Benvie as a scam artist who has been pretending to raise money for his son, using “photos and story for years to raise money—but none of that money has gone to his son or his son’s care.” Benvie had allegedly set up a GoFundMe page, none of the proceeds of which the man or his child saw. They only found out about it because someone mentioned it on their own Facebook page.
There is a long history of this kind of vigilante, rule-of-law hypocrisy at our border that goes back generations. The border, like our administration, attracts charlatans and sociopaths, and (usually) men who want to bully their way into money and power. You can read about the dodgy, sociopathic history of border patrol “nativists” in David Neiwert’s diary.