SASABE, Arizona – The 15 migrant children, tired and hungry, stumbled into a gap in the rusty-colored border wall that rises between Mexico and Arizona, near the end of their two-week transition north. Unexpectedly, a man in a hat decorated with a blackened American flag approached them – a traditional message that the enemy would have no quotas – approached them and persuaded them to go to his campsite.
Soon the girls and boys from Guatemala were sitting under a blue tent eating hamburgers and sausages. Their host for the day in this remote part of the Arizona desert, Jason Frank, an enthusiastic follower of the QAnon movement, handed out “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirts featuring President Biden. Giggling and confused, the children changed into their shirts and posed for a group photo. They later formed a prayer circle with Mr. Frank and the rest of his team before the Border Patrol appeared.
Mr Frank and his group, with weapons tucked in their hips, are camping near Sasabe, Arizona, as a self-appointed border force with the stated goal of protecting thousands of migrant children who arrive from the evils of sex trafficking – a favorite topic of QAnon.
They are the latest in what has over the years become a home industry of dozens of armed civilians who have packed camouflage equipment, tents and binoculars and are located along the southern border.
Mr. Frank, a QAnon influencer whose Facebook page has shown him in recent months in a photo with such conservative celebrities as Donald J. Trump Jr., Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell, has turned his team into a new style of border guards, motivated not so much by halting immigration as by protecting the country from other alleged threats – in this case, an unfounded conspiracy theory. that migrant children are referred to pedophilia groups.
“They are the object of trafficking, sexual trafficking. This is trade number one, “said Mr Frank, 44, when he was dropped from his list of alleged conspirators, starting with the late Jeffrey Epstein. “The money, that’s where it is right now,” he said.
The federal government has long feared that hundreds of thousands of migrant children who have traveled across the border for nearly a decade may be vulnerable to criminal exploitation, and has stepped up vigorous scrutiny efforts to ensure that young immigrants share legal relationships with relatives or family friends who come to pick them up.
But the crossing of minors across the southern border as part of sexual trafficking schemes is unusual, according to groups that monitor and combat trafficking.
“We haven’t heard of migrant children being brought in as prostitutes or slaves,” said Stacy Sutherland, an Arizona anti-trafficking officer. “At the border, the majority are people who have paid to be smuggled.
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Federal officials declined to comment on the QAnon’s activities, and it was unclear whether the volunteers had broken any laws.
For QAnon leaders, suspicions that migrant children fall into the hands of sexual predators fit into the movement’s basic conspiracy theory – that an elite pedophile bondage led by prominent Democrats grabs innocent children, a complex fantasy that led to the Drama of PizzaGate during the 2016 presidential campaign, but the new focus on immigration, analysts say, also serves to raise political support and raise money by using people’s inherent instinct to protect children while promoting a tough border policy.
“Children are a support to use to spread their message,” said Mia Bloom, an expert on extremist radicalization and co-author of “Pastels and Pedophiles: In QAnon’s Mind.”
“They are instrumentalizing children for internal propaganda and supporting their political agenda,” she said.
Mr. Frank, a Las Vegas native, has already become a minor celebrity in conservative circles after helping bring a 100-year-old World War II veteran to the stage during Trump’s 2020 rally in Arizona. His photos and videos have since reached thousands of supporters on a number of social media platforms.
He arrived in Sasabe in late April, borrowing a leisure car, which he shared with his teenage son, other QAnon followers who had cycled and two large dogs. Inside, he is holding a cache of weapons, including pistols and a loaded AR-15 rifle, according to his social media posts.
One day recently, Mr. Frank provided information and answers to questions about his mission before deciding he did not want to be interviewed by The New York Times. His personal website states that after drug addiction and prison life, he found a goal in rescuing children.
Mr. Frank delves into one of the most complex aspects of American immigration. While U.S. authorities reject large numbers of migrants under the pandemic public health rule, children who arrive unaccompanied – usually carrying the address and phone number of a relative in the United States they hope to join – have usually been allowed to enter the country. . Families in Central America, hoping to free their children from poverty and gang violence at home, often pay smugglers to take children through the openings in the border wall, knowing that Border Patrol agents will take them.
They are then placed in shelters run by the Ministry of Health and Social Services, which conducts inspections of adults who come to receive or “sponsor” children. The agency said it was caring for the children “until they are released properly and safely with a verified sponsor.”
Most families probably did not expect Mr. Frank and his team to create their own ad hoc screening process.
Parked where gaps in the border wall make it easier for smugglers to send groups of up to 30 children at once, Mr Frank and his team usually greet young people with hamburgers and hot dogs and broadcast their arrival live on Facebook, announcing their intention to send them. keep safe.
Humanitarian volunteers and immigration activists working in the area said they were afraid to see children apparently unaware of Mr Frank and his beliefs being diverted before the Border Patrol took them.
“We believe that the behavior of this group is illegal and extremely dangerous,” said Margo Cowan, a public defender in Pima County who includes Sasabe and a longtime immigration activist. She said the law requires those who find children on their own to contact a police officer immediately. (Mr. Frank said his group always contacted the border patrol after serving the children.)
She said she was particularly concerned about Mr Frank’s allegations that his group had asked the children to provide the addresses and telephone numbers of family members or family friends they planned to join, and then contacted them. persons, ostensibly to protect children from falling into the wrong hands. These actions could be seen as harassment of adult immigrants who accept children, she said.
“We have people who call and do welfare checks and keep showing up to make them uncomfortable,” Mr Frank said, referring to the adults who end up taking the children with them.
Mr Frank criticized the government’s screening program, calling it “very wide open with many doors”. He added: “That’s why we are here, creating a solution, being part of it.”
In photos posted on another Facebook member’s page, Mr. Frank and his colleagues at the camp can be seen hugging a baby he says is 30 days old and has recently crossed the border with his young mother.
Members of his team called the man the mother said she planned to join, Mr Frank told The Times. He said the group found in its study that two of the four people living at the man’s address had links to organized crime cartels – allegations for which he had not offered evidence.
Chris Nanos, the sheriff of Pima County, called the “QAnon types” at the border “nut jobs”, but said they were not his responsibility.
“If they are preventing migrants from crossing, the border patrol has to deal with it,” he said, noting that it must protect one million people in an area of 9,200 square miles.
Migrants are not the only ones targeted by QAnon’s monitoring activities. On April 25, aid workers visited the border wall with a Tennessee camera crew, including a man legally resident in the United States from Guatemala. Mr. Frank and his team noticed them.
“They approached us, shouting, ‘Illegal alien!’ An illegal alien! ”Recalls Gail Kokurek of Tucson Samaritans, who runs a resource center that offers food, clothing and first aid to migrants in the small Mexican town on the border.
A chase ensued, with Mr Frank and another QAnon member trying to push her out of the way, according to Ms Kokurek, who said they stopped when a border patrol vehicle crossed their path. The agent asked the Guatemalan for the documents.
Later, one of the team members uploaded a video of the incident on Facebook, which shows a vehicle following closely behind Ms. Kokurek’s car on a desert road. “Who has time to dig,” writes Mr. Frank, “in the little old ladies who work for the cartel here?” I already have names, addresses, ages, phone numbers. “
The 15 migrant children who were taken to QAnon camp last week, some of whom looked no older than maybe 12, drank water and ate granola while Mr Frank prepared the barbecue.
A Cuban who passed with them was handed a sheet of paper and told, through a Spanish-speaking supporter on the phone, to go child by child, writing down their names, their destinations …
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