Simon Romero

“I’d load up my guns for the fighting if we could just secede and join Texas,” said Moorhead from Loco Hills, population about 125. “They love the money from our oil up in Santa Fe. But they treat us like dirt.”

Moorhead, 42, may sound more extreme than most. But go just about anywhere in southeastern New Mexico, the deeply conservative oil-rich region known as “Little Texas,” and people are seething over a political shift to the left in the state capital.

A frenetic oil boom is laying bare this divide, while suddenly lifting one of the poorest states in the country into the top ranks of global oil producers. Normally that might be cause for celebration, but Democrats now in power in New Mexico are coming under fire on two fronts: from oil patch conservatives, for pushing to hike oil royalties and spend the windfall on progressive causes; and from environmentalists on the left, for allowing the oil boom to materialize in the first place.

After Democrats swept elections in New Mexico in 2018, they quickly enacted a “mini Green New Deal” requiring that by 2045, all electricity in the state must come from renewable energy. Going further, Democrats sought to assert greater control over the oil industry with proposed legislation to hike oil royalties and ban hydraulic fracturing.

Those bills unleashed fury in southeastern New Mexico before stalling in the state Legislature, and revealed an intensifying source of tension: Republican-controlled areas of the state produce the state’s oil wealth, while Democrats decide how to spend it.

New Mexico recently surpassed Alaska, Oklahoma and California in oil production, and is now the third-largest oil-producing state. Skyrocketing production is bolstering the state’s traditionally fragile finances, generating a projected budget surplus of $1.3 billion for 2019.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, is moving fast to use the bonanza. New Mexico increased spending this year on early childhood programs, raised teacher salaries and, in one of the boldest state-led efforts to expand access to higher education, unveiled a plan to use surging oil income to make tuition free at public universities.

Conservatives in southeastern New Mexico have reacted with a mixture of resentment and alarm over such plans. Some question why the rest of the state should benefit from their work when their own roads and schools need funds. Mark Veteto, an oilman who is among New Mexico’s largest political donors, argued that a fracking ban could have a draconian impact.

“I’m hearing from friends in Texas, ‘What the hell is going on in New Mexico?’” said Veteto, a Republican. “We’re a pillar of the economy, we’re thriving, so it’s hard to understand why they’re going after us.”

At the same time, Lujan Grisham is facing an outcry from progressives about boosting production of fossil fuels that contribute to global warming.

“New Mexico simply needs to keep all of its oil in the ground,” said Mariel Nanasi, executive director of New Energy Economy, a Santa Fe group promoting clean energy sources. Taking aim at the plan to use oil revenues to cover university tuition, she asked, “Why does a college degree frankly matter if someone is graduating into a world of climate disaster?”

With moderate Democrats now largely in control, the multifaceted debate reflects the rearrangement of political power in what has traditionally been a swing state. The 2004 election marked the last time a Republican presidential candidate carried the state. In 2018, Democrats won every statewide office and flipped the congressional seat representing southeastern New Mexico.

Stephanie Garcia Richard, a Democrat elected last year as state land commissioner, acknowledged that people in southeastern New Mexico were chafing at her efforts to tighten control over the oil industry.

“People saw a forked tail and horns coming out of my head and they thought, ‘Garcia Richard gets elected and the entire industry dies,’” said the commissioner, a teacher who is the first woman and the first Latina in the post.

“We’re holding people’s feet to the fire, absolutely we are,” she said, emphasizing that her proposal to raise oil royalties to 25%, hotly contested by oil producers, would only match the rate in Texas. “But this state matters to me.”

New Mexico’s oil industry is thriving, she said, with production forecast to reach the milestone of 1 million barrels per day later this year.

That projected surge has some environmental leaders in the state fuming. The mini Green New Deal, they say, shifts electricity production away from fossil fuels — mainly coal — but does nothing to scale back the oil production that also contributes to climate change.

Others on the left eye the boom from another angle, saying the oil windfall is a sliver of what it should be in relation to New Mexico’s new significance in global oil markets.

After doubling output in the past two years to 900,000 barrels a day, New Mexico now produces more oil than OPEC members Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon combined. If the state is to develop clean energy sources while also fighting poverty, political leaders need to generate even more revenues from oil, said Jon Goldstein, a former state energy secretary.

“So much of the profit from this boom is flowing to Houston or London when it should remain in New Mexico,” said Goldstein, now with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Hobbs, a city in the heart of oil country that straddles the state line with Texas, has daily flights to Houston but none to any cities in New Mexico. Here, it is apparent that at least some of the oil bounty stayed in the state.

A futuristic $63.5 million recreational complex features a three-story jungle gym, an indoor lacrosse field and a water park with slides, geysers, rain clouds and a lazy river.

Well-kept walking trails and bike paths traverse the city of 38,000. Miguel Corral, 33, a Mexican immigrant with an oil field trucking business, opened a new rodeo arena this year featuring everything from roping competitions to boxing matches and country western bands.

Vehicles with Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma license plates ply the roads, reflecting an influx of out-of-state job seekers. With recent high school graduates earning more than $100,000 a year in the oil fields, some in Hobbs bemoan the rising cost of living.

Jazmine Brantley, 33, an economics professor from Atlanta who lived in Hobbs briefly in 2016, said she was stunned when she moved back in August. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment in her complex had surged from $735 a month to $1,100.

“It used to be just beat-up trucks in the parking lot,” Brantley said. “Now it’s brand-new Jeeps, BMWs, Cadillac Escalades.”

Dean Johnson, 60, who makes cowboy boots by hand out of caribou, shark and ostrich, said he was able to sell each pair for $1,450 and up — and some customers have to wait two years.

“We’re humming along, doing good for ourselves and making a load of money for New Mexico,” Johnson said. “But we know the rest of the state would get rid of us if they could.”

Some tension involves historical cultural differences. Elsewhere in New Mexico, people often disdain any association with Texas, sentiment stretching back at least to a disastrous attempt by the pro-slavery Republic of Texas to invade New Mexico in the 1840s.

In much of New Mexico, Hispanic history and culture, along with the Spanish language enduring in the state for centuries, are celebrated. Lujan Grisham, a Hispanic Democrat, won the governor’s race in a landslide last year against Steve Pearce, an Anglo Republican from Hobbs.

In southeastern New Mexico, politics remain largely dominated by Anglos — even though Latinos account for nearly 60% of the population of Lea County, which includes Hobbs. When the only Latino on the county commission this year proposed a $1,500 bonus to county employees who pass a Spanish proficiency test, the commission, made up entirely of Republicans, rejected the proposal.

Residents in the southeastern part of the state openly express admiration for Texas’ culture and economic mettle. Many speak with an accent closer to that of Abilene than Albuquerque.

“We’re pretty far from Santa Fe out here,” said Bob Reid, chief executive of the JF Maddox Foundation, a philanthropic group started by a longtime utility magnate in Hobbs that is among New Mexico’s largest private foundations. “Even our liberals tend to be a little more conservative.”

West of Hobbs, on a road cutting through fracking sites and gas flares lighting up the night sky, lies the epicenter of the oil boom: the town of Carlsbad.

Traffic congestion, housing capacity, law enforcement shortages — all are posing problems in a town whose 29,000 residents are increasingly agitated by oil royalties flowing to other parts of New Mexico.

Allen Davis, the county manager of Eddy County, said officials had discussed printing T-shirts for distribution in the state proclaiming, “You’re Fracking Welcome.”

“Man camps” are popping up all over town, providing temporary housing for the overwhelmingly male workforce in the oil fields. At one such camp, occupancy in October was at 100%, with nearly 400 people staying in prefabricated buildings, according to the manager, Rocío Delgado.

Delgado said she had tried, and sometimes failed, to keep the rowdiness down.

“Guys were dressing up prostitutes in work uniforms, trying to sneak them in when they were pulling in with their trucks,” she said. “I cut that out right quick.”

Businesses of all types have such a hard time finding workers that recruiters pitch gigs in the Walmart parking lot. Walmart lost so many employees to better-paying jobs that it poached cleaning ladies from the man camp, Delgado said. The women, who came in from El Paso, now work as cashiers, and Walmart covers their rent at the camp.

Davis, a former executive for the oil giant Chevron who moved from Australia, said breakneck growth in Carlsbad and Hobbs could soon produce a metropolitan region similar in size to Midland-Odessa in West Texas, which have a combined population of more than a quarter of a million people.

“What they did in 50 years, we’ve got to do in five,” he said.

At the No Whiner Diner, a sign in the parking lot seemed to be chiding the state for Carlsbad’s colossal traffic jams: “Congestion not just in your head,” it said.

The other side proclaimed, “Santa Fe taketh more than giveth.”

This article originally appeared in

New Mexico's 'Little Texas' Booms, Igniting Battles Over Oil Windfall

LOCO HILLS, N.M. — At the diner she manages in the heart of New Mexico’s oil country, Joni Moorhead talks to roughnecks all day long about potholed roads, cramped lodging camps, soaring rents — and state politics.

Oregon police arrested him in 2006 on charges of impersonating a police officer and a felony weapons offense. They had found him showing guns to teenagers in a gas-station parking lot while wearing a police-style uniform and a badge emblazoned with the words “Special Agent.”

“Hopkins stated that he worked for the federal government directly under George Bush,” Officer Jack Daniel of the sheriff’s office in Klamath County, Oregon, wrote in his report. Hopkins, the report said, claimed variously to be investigating a meth lab, hunting fugitives and undertaking unspecified “operations” in Afghanistan.

Officials in South Dakota indicted Hopkins in 2009 on charges of failure to pay child support. Long before then, Hopkins pleaded guilty in 1996 in Michigan to felony possession of a loaded firearm and was sentenced to 16 months to two years in prison.

Hopkins finally came under the scrutiny of federal authorities in 2017, after the FBI received reports that his group was “training” to assassinate Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros, according to documents unsealed Monday in federal court.

Hopkins, 69, appeared in U.S. District Court on Monday after his arrest over the weekend on yet another charge, this time of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition.

The arrest followed the posting online of a series of videos by Hopkins’ group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, showing men in camouflage circling and detaining hundreds of migrants in the desert near Sunland Park, New Mexico, and then handing the migrants over to Border Patrol.

The heavily armed militia’s actions have ignited debate over whether its members broke kidnapping laws and effectively acted as a paramilitary force supporting the Border Patrol. Militia members argue that they were assisting authorities to patrol remote areas of the border and carrying out “verbal citizen’s arrests.”

In an affidavit, David S. Gabriel, an FBI special agent, said the bureau was made aware of the activities of Hopkins after receiving reports in October 2017 of “alleged militia extremist activity” in northwestern New Mexico.

Gabriel said that the following month, two FBI agents went to a trailer park in Flora Vista, New Mexico, where Hopkins was living at the time. With Hopkins’ consent, the agents entered the home and saw about 10 firearms in plain view, in what Hopkins referred to as his office.

Hopkins, who has also used the name Johnny Horton Jr., told the agents that the guns belonged to Fay Sanders Murphy, whom he described to agents as his common-law wife, according to the affidavit. The agents collected at least nine firearms from the home as evidence, including a 12-gauge shotgun and various handguns.

The court affidavit gave few details about the report the FBI received stating that the United Constitutional Patriots “were training to assassinate George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama because of these individuals’ support of Antifa.” The term Antifa refers to left-wing activists who have clashed with right-wing groups in cities across the country.

The FBI also did not specify why agents waited to arrest Hopkins after finding his home awash in guns in 2017. At that time, agents concluded that his possession of the weapons was illegal because he had a previous felony conviction. Separately, a probation officer in Oregon had already asked in 2007 for a warrant for Hopkins’ arrest after he failed to report to probation meetings.

Hopkins’ lawyer, Kelly O’Connell, disputed the reports about assassination plans. “My client told me that is not true,” O’Connell said.

He also questioned the timing of the arrest. “My question is, why now?” O’Connell said. He suggested that pressure from prominent Democrats in New Mexico may have prompted the FBI to take action.

O’Connell said Hopkins planned to plead not guilty to the latest charge.

After the 2017 search of Hopkins’ residence in New Mexico, FBI agents contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and determined that none of the firearms collected from the home was manufactured in New Mexico, opening the door to possible additional charges of transporting the weapons in interstate commerce, a federal offense.

O’Connell, who was the host of a conservative radio talk show program in New Mexico until 2017, declined to say who was paying Hopkins’ legal fees.

Hopkins could face up to 10 years in prison if he is found guilty of the new charge. He told the judge Monday that he suffers from various medical problems and gave his age as 70, though court records showed he was 69.

“I’m not a militia specialist,” O’Connell said when asked about the motives of Hopkins and other members of the armed group. He added, “They believe they are helping to enforce the laws of America on immigration.”

Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots, declined to talk Monday about Hopkins’ legal problems or other actions by the group. But he insisted that the group planned to remain camped near the border in Sunland Park.

“We’re not leaving,” Benvie said.

Still, pressure is building on the group from various directions. Both PayPal and GoFundMe banned accounts for the group, potentially making it harder for the militia to receive donations. And the rail transportation company Union Pacific said it believed that the group was camped on land adjacent to its property in southern New Mexico.

“They have trespassed on our property to access this camp,” said a Union Pacific spokesman, Tim McMahan. “While we cannot make them move their camp, we have asked them to not trespass on our property.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/us/militia-border-new-mexico.html" id="2450d6ce-ad08-31e4-aedb-f690a9387ea3">The New York Times</a>.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Before the FBI arrested Larry Hopkins, the leader of the right-wing militia that detained migrant families in the New Mexico desert, he’d had so many run-ins with the law that his police record stretched across much of the United States.

FBI Was Told That Militia in New Mexico Planned to Kill Obama and Clinton

Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 69, appeared in U.S. District Court on Monday after his arrest over the weekend on a charge of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition.

The arrest followed a series of videos posted by Hopkins’ group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, showing men in camouflage circling and detaining hundreds of migrants in the desert near Sunland Park, New Mexico, and then handing the migrants over to Border Patrol.

In an affidavit, David S. Gabriel, an FBI special agent, said the bureau was made aware of Hopkins’ activities after receiving reports in October 2017 of “alleged militia extremist activity” in northwestern New Mexico.

Gabriel said that the following month, two FBI agents went to a trailer park in Flora Vista, New Mexico, where Hopkins was living at the time. With Hopkins’ consent, the agents entered the home and saw about 10 firearms in plain view.

Hopkins told the agents the guns belonged to Fay Sanders Murphy, whom he described as his common-law wife, according to the affidavit. The agents collected at least nine firearms from the home as evidence.

The court affidavit gave few details about the report the FBI received stating the United Constitutional Patriots “were training to assassinate George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama because of these individuals’ support of Antifa.” The term Antifa refers to left-wing activists who have clashed with right-wing groups in cities across the country.

Hopkins’ lawyer, Kelly O’Connell, disputed the reports about assassination plans.

He also questioned the timing of the arrest. “My question is, why now?” O’Connell said, noting the weapons were found in Hopkins’ home in 2017. He suggested that pressure from prominent Democrats in New Mexico may have prompted the FBI to take action.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — The imprisoned leader of a right-wing militia that detained migrant families in New Mexico first came under the scrutiny of federal authorities in 2017, after the FBI received reports that his group was “training” to assassinate Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros, according to documents unsealed Monday in federal court.

The militia leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins, 69, appeared in U.S. District Court on Monday after his arrest over the weekend on a charge of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition.

He also questioned the timing of the arrest. “My question is, why now?” O’Connell said, noting that the weapons were found in his home in 2017. He suggested that pressure from prominent Democrats in New Mexico may have prompted the FBI to take action.

Hopkins has faced weapons-related charges before, according to court documents. He was convicted of two felonies in Oregon in 2006: criminal impersonation of a peace officer and felony possession of a firearm. And he pleaded guilty in 1996 in Michigan to possession of a loaded firearm, and was sentenced to 16 months to two years in prison.

The group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, filmed several of its actions in recent days, including the detention this week of about 200 migrants who had recently crossed the border near Sunland Park, New Mexico, with the intention of seeking asylum. They uploaded videos to social media of migrant families, blinking in the darkness in the glare of what appeared to be the militia’s spotlights.

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the militia’s actions in a letter Thursday that asked New Mexico’s governor and attorney general to investigate the group.

In a statement, Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general, said: “These individuals should not attempt to exercise authority reserved for law enforcement.”

Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots, declined to specify how many of its members were in Sunland Park, a city in New Mexico about 9 miles west of El Paso, Texas. He said the group included people with military or law enforcement experience.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said in a statement it was “completely unacceptable” that migrant families “might be menaced or threatened in any way, shape or form when they arrive at our border.”

The video of this week's episode in the New Mexico desert shows Border Patrol agents arriving on the scene at some point after members of the militia had come into contact with the migrants. Before the arrival of the federal agents, a woman narrating the video tells a man who appears to be a militia member “Don't aim the gun” in the direction of the families.

Carlos A. Diaz, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection declined to discuss the episode or the United Constitutional Patriots, but said the agency “does not endorse private groups or organizations taking enforcement matters into their own hands.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/new-mexico-militia.html" id="0c943614-7d0c-3c54-a26d-b672559e8515">The New York Times</a>.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A right-wing militia group operating in southern New Mexico has begun stopping groups of migrant families and detaining them at gunpoint before handing them over to Border Patrol agents, raising tension over the tactics of armed vigilantes along the border between the United States and Mexico.

Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum-Seekers at Gunpoint

Members of the group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, filmed several of their actions in recent days, including the detention this week of a group of about 200 migrants who had recently crossed the border near Sunland Park, New Mexico, with the intention of seeking asylum. They uploaded videos to social media of exhausted-looking migrant families, blinking in the darkness in the glare of what appeared to be the militia’s spotlights.

Professed militias have long operated along the border with attempts to curb the flow of migrants into the United States. But targeting the recent influx of families, who are legally allowed to request asylum and often quickly surrender to Border Patrol agents, is raising tension with human rights activists in this part of the West.

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the militia’s actions in a letter Thursday that asked New Mexico’s governor and attorney general to investigate the group. The ACLU said the militia had no legal authority under New Mexico or federal law to detain or arrest migrants in the United States.

“We cannot allow racist and armed vigilantes to kidnap and detain people seeking asylum,” two lawyers for the ACLU, María Martínez Sánchez and Kirsten Greer Love, said in the letter.

Jim Benvie, a spokesman for the United Constitutional Patriots, said in a telephone interview that his group had been camped near El Paso, Texas, for the past two months. Benvie contended that his group’s actions were legal, comparing the detention of the migrants to “a verbal citizen’s arrest.”

“We’re just here to support the Border Patrol and show the public the reality of the border,” said Benvie, 43, who recently came to New Mexico from Minnesota. He said the organization plans to remain on the border until the extended wall proposed by President Donald Trump is built or Congress changes immigration laws to make it harder for migrants to request asylum.

Militias have recently stepped up their activities in New Mexico and other states as authorities scramble to respond to a surge in families from Central America, with total apprehensions on the border reaching more than 92,000 in March. Elsewhere on the border, the mayor of Yuma, Arizona, declared an emergency this week as the city sought federal and state assistance to deal with migrant arrivals.

Benvie declined to specify how many of its members were in Sunland Park, a city in New Mexico about 9 miles west of El Paso. He said the group included people with military or law enforcement experience.

“If these people follow our verbal commands, we hold them until Border Patrol comes,” Benvie said. “Border Patrol has never asked us to stand down.”

The governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, said in a statement that it was “completely unacceptable” that migrant families “might be menaced or threatened in any way, shape or form when they arrive at our border.”

“It should go without saying that regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone,” she added.

The video of this week's episode in the New Mexico desert shows Border Patrol agents arriving on the scene at some point after members of the militia have already come into contact with the migrants. Before the arrival of the federal agents, a woman narrating the video tells a man who appears to be a militia member “Don't aim the gun” in the direction of the families. The migrants can be seen kneeling on the ground and embracing one another.

Benvie said members of the militia gave a “verbal order of arrest” to the migrants, telling them to wait where they were until Border Patrol agents arrived. Members of his group offered $20 to any of the migrants who could identify the smuggler who helped them cross the border, he said, but none took them up on the offer.

Benvie said members of his group were told not to point their weapons at any of the migrants. He added that the group has a new rule in which members are not allowed to go on patrol with military-style rifles, but can still carry handguns. “We can't make them stay if they don't want to,” he said.

Carlos A. Diaz, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that includes the Border Patrol, declined to discuss the episode or the United Constitutional Patriots, but said the agency “does not endorse private groups or organizations taking enforcement matters into their own hands.”

The responses to the militia’s videos on Facebook included an array of antagonistic and racist descriptions of the asylum-seekers.

“Got to stop being sympathetic because of the kids,” said one commentator, Linda Ellen Sweeney. “Got to consider them as collateral damage now. We are DONE.”

Ursela Ojeda, a policy adviser in Washington for the Women’s Refugee Commission, an organization seeking to protect the rights of women and children displaced by conflict and crisis, called the actions of the militia “highly problematic.”

“These are families, and lots of young children, fleeing dangerous situations,” Ojeda said. “I have a hard time seeing how someone has a right to point a loaded weapon at these families.”

Rappers celebrate her scoops, proclaiming that “she gets more love than our own city’s mayor.”

“I guess this makes me famous, huh?” said Villarreal, 34, a 10th-grade dropout with a shaved head, an abundance of tattoos and an impassioned 119,000-strong following on Facebook. She is arguably the most influential journalist in Laredo, a border city of 260,000.

Reporting in profanity-laced Spanglish and calling herself La Gordiloca, which roughly translates as the Crazy Fat Lady, Villarreal’s swift rise to prominence reflects how many people on the border now prefer to get their news — and just maybe, provides a glimpse at the future of journalism.

All the notoriety amounts to a big shift for Villarreal. Just a few years ago she was working part time for a wrecking crew removing scrap from tractor-trailer crash sites. She was struggling with depression and post-traumatic stress after losing a baby born prematurely.

But Villarreal embarked on a second career in muckraking in 2015. She has held local officials accountable — emerging victorious from a caustic legal battle with the Laredo Police Department over press freedom — and unearthed stories that were not being told.

“News on the Move,” she calls it.

Fans stop her on the street now to ask for autographs or selfies; Laredo eateries hire her to advertise their cuisine.

“She’s already something of a folk hero down there,” said Daxton Stewart, a journalism professor specializing in media law at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. “What’s fascinating is that she’s doing it the old-fashioned way, but with new technologies, by breaking news the authorities just don’t want out there.”

Her recent reports include a horrific case of child abuse (“Teenagers having babies!!” she opined), the arrest of a school superintendent in Waco for possession of marijuana (“Let’s all do a petition for him in Laredo so he won’t lose his job!!”), drug raids and messy tractor-trailer accidents.

Villarreal reports entirely on Facebook, often by livestreaming video on her page on her iPhone. Some follow her because of her fire-breathing reporting style, blending facts with chisme (gossip), but many in Laredo welcome her exposés on public corruption in a city whose abundant reports of graft are the target of an FBI investigation.

In February, for instance, she scooped the competition with a report about a former Laredo police investigator who was accused of taking gambling proceeds from raids on slot-machine casinos, then was allowed to resign when confronted with the findings.

It took days for competitors to finally catch up and get the story about Anthony Carrillo Jr., 47, a 26-year veteran of the police force, when he was charged with tampering with evidence and abuse of his official capacity.

Laredo police officers arrested Villarreal in December 2017 and charged her with two counts of misuse of official information, a third-degree felony. They said the charges were in connection with her reporting on the 2017 suicide of a Customs and Border Protection supervisor, whose name Villarreal published.

For months before her arrest, the Police Department had also been hunting down the source of other leaks to Villarreal. They identified a police officer suspected of supplying the information — a woman who had worked on the force for 19 years — after searching the officer’s phone and finding hundreds of calls exchanged with Villarreal.

The department placed the officer on suspension for 20 days and said in a statement that the case against Villarreal involved an “obligation to the protection of a person’s right to privacy as it relates to sensitive information.”

The district judge who examined the case promptly dismissed the charges against Villarreal, but the legal battle left her with mixed feelings about her work.

“The case made me even more well-known in Laredo, and more sources talk to me now,” she said. “But I remain scared, and who I’m most scared of here aren’t the criminals or smugglers. It’s the Laredo Police Department.”

Without editors to review her work, Villarreal reports almost entirely on her own. The only person who occasionally helps her monitor developments in Laredo is her mother, Maricela Rodríguez, 55, a former migrant worker who used to harvest sugar beets in Minnesota to support her family.

“I’m still learning how to say things like ‘allegedly’ or ‘it’s being said’ when I’m describing breaking news,” said Villarreal. “It’s a challenge, because I speak the language of the streets, and that’s why people follow me.”

As newspapers in this part of Texas cut staff and resources for reporting, Villarreal is pressing ahead. She makes a small amount of money by promoting restaurants she frequents, though it is not enough to replace her 1998 Dodge Ram truck, which she bought used for $700 and affectionately calls her Blue Demon.

“For some reason, I find reporting therapeutic,” said Villarreal, describing her severe depression after losing her baby a decade ago. She said she gained about 100 pounds after the loss, and tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrist.

One part of the job that she dislikes, Villarreal said, is what she calls “my haters.” Some go on her Facebook page and mock her appearance or her demeanor. Others express disgust at all her swearing. Indeed, many of her reports would have trouble finding their way into the pages of a family newspaper.

“Every other word out of her mouth is obscene,” said Abundio Rene Cantú, a lawyer for a Laredo day care center that sued Villarreal for defamation after she reported that children at the site were being mistreated. Villarreal is appealing an initial ruling against her.

“This is a woman who has no respect for the rule of law, or due process,” Cantú said. “I feel she is a danger to this community because she interferes with law enforcement.”

When Villarreal recently declared opposition to President Donald Trump and his plans for a border wall, some conservatives in Laredo questioned whether she was an undocumented immigrant. (Villarreal’s grandparents are from Mexico and she was born in the United States.)

Most days, she pays her detractors little heed. On a recent day, she prowled the city in the Blue Demon, cranking up the volume as she sang along with Tejano bands like Siggno.

Stopping for lunch a short stroll from the border, at La Posada Hotel, Villareal was quickly recognized. Some diners stopped to give her a hug and express best wishes about a new revelation: Villarreal is pregnant. Others lined up to take selfies with her.

“I’m one of your top fans,” Hilda Peña, 72, told Villarreal after wandering over to take a photograph with her. Peña, a retired financial services administrator, said Villarreal won her over last year with her reporting on Juan David Ortiz, the Border Patrol agent accused of killing several women in Laredo. (According to investigators, he has confessed to four killings; he has pleaded not guilty.)

“With that serial killer on the loose, I wondered if I should get my gun,” Peña said. “But La Gordiloca made it clear when the situation was under control.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/us/gordiloca-laredo-priscilla-villarreal.html" id="031021c4-e700-3d61-a4d9-20583e0997e2">The New York Times</a>.

LAREDO, Texas — Priscilla Villarreal roams the streets of Laredo in an old Dodge pickup, scrambling to drug busts and murder scenes to bring her tales from the dark side of the southwest border to her many viewers.

La Gordiloca: The Swearing Muckraker Upending Border Journalism

“A mixture of grief and shock overwhelmed me since this was the first I heard of this,” said Valencia, 66, leader of a teachers union in El Paso. “The more I looked into it, the more stunned I was at how many Mexicans were lynched in this country.”

Valencia and other descendants of lynching victims are now casting attention on one of the grimmest campaigns of racist terror in the American West: the lynching of thousands of men, women and children of Mexican descent from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century.

Some victims were burned alive, like Antonio Rodríguez, 20, a migrant worker who was hauled from a jail in Rocksprings, Texas, tied to a tree and set ablaze in 1910. Other mobs hanged, whipped or shot Mexicans, many of whom were U.S. citizens, sometimes drawing crowds in the thousands.

Lynchings have long been associated with violence against African-Americans in the American South, and these atrocities are remembered at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama. Lynchings of Hispanics have faded into history with less attention. Often, they have been portrayed as attempts to exercise justice on behalf of white settlers protecting their livestock or claims to land.

But a new movement is underway to uncover that neglected past. It has unleashed discussions about the scramble for land or mining claims that frequently influenced these lynchings, as well as the traces of such episodes in resurgent anti-Latino sentiment and the question many parts of the United States are confronting: Who gets to tell history?

“The conquest of the West is still simply a tale of incredible progress for many Americans,” said Monica Muñoz Martínez, a professor of American studies at Brown University who has written extensively about anti-Mexican violence in Texas.

“But despite the unwillingness to recognize these lynchings as a tragedy, or even recognize them at all, momentum is building to finally reckon with these events,” said Muñoz Martínez, who was raised in Texas and is a co-founder of Refusing to Forget, a group committed to increasing awareness about state-sanctioned violence against Latinos in Texas.

Texas, which enshrined white supremacy in its 1836 constitution when Anglo slaveholders seceded from Mexico, had by far the most episodes of mob violence against people of Mexican descent, according to William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, historians who have documented such cases.

Reasons given for these lynchings varied wildly, including accusations of cattle theft, murder, cheating at cards, refusing to play the fiddle, shouting “Viva Diaz!” — even witchcraft.

In 1880, a mob in Collin County in North Texas accused Refugio Ramírez, his wife and their teenage daughter, María Ines, of bewitching their neighbors. The three of them were burned to death, according to Laura F. Edwards, a historian at Duke University.

In another episode in 1882, a man of Mexican descent identified as Augustin Agirer filed a complaint against an Anglo man who shot at his dog. In retaliation, Anglos tracked Agirer down and fatally shot him in front of his wife, The Austin Weekly Statesman reported at the time.

In 1922, a group of 10 men snatched Elias Villareal Zarate from a jail in Weslaco in South Texas, where he was being held for fighting with a white co-worker. La Prensa, a San Antonio newspaper, described how the mob hanged him, raising the ire of Mexican diplomats who were trying to curb such killings.

One of the most contentious lynching episodes anywhere in the West involved the ancestors of Valencia, the El Paso teachers union official. The family and several neighbors had settled in the outpost of Porvenir in a remote stretch of West Texas on the Rio Grande, eking out a quiet existence as farmers.

But on Jan. 28, 1918, a group of Anglo cattlemen, Texas Rangers and U.S. Army cavalry soldiers descended on the village as families slept. They seized 15 men and boys, the youngest of whom was 16, marched them to a bluff overlooking the river and fatally shot them at close range.

After burning Porvenir to the ground, the Rangers and ranchmen claimed, without offering proof, that the villagers had been thieves. They contended that the victims had been informants for Mexicans who had raided the nearby Brite Ranch a month earlier. They also claimed that they had come under fire.

But investigations by the Army and the State Department found that the Mexicans were unarmed when they were killed. Valencia’s great-grandfather, Longino Flores, was among the dead. Her grandfather, Rosendo Mesa, was a boy at the time. He survived because he was away buying provisions.

“My grandfather kept everything about the massacre to himself, which kind of amazed me,” said Valencia, reflecting on why it took so long for her to find out about the killings. “Remember, this is Texas. There’s reverence for the nearly godly Texas Rangers. To this day, the truth is hard.”

Valencia found out how hard it is to even agree on the facts surrounding the killings when historians and descendants of the victims at Porvenir, a village largely erased from local memory after it was razed in 1918 and survivors fled, applied to the Texas Historical Commission for a historical marker.

“Don’t tell me that if the police kill an Anglo in Chihuahua City, there isn’t going to be some differences about what really happened,” said Jim White III, 70, a descendant of the Brite family, whose ranch not far from Porvenir was the one that had been raided a month before the lynchings.

“It was a turbulent time on the border when you had a lot of people getting killed on both sides,” said White, who still lives on the family’s ranch and refrains from calling the killings a massacre. “It’s 2019, right? Playing the race card doesn’t work any more.”

Others who have opposed the marker include the chairwoman of the historical commission, who cited concerns that it was being used by “militant Hispanics” looking for reparations. The Presidio County attorney worried that the dedication ceremony for a marker could serve as the backdrop for a “major political rally” for Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat who last fall was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, according to The Texas Observer, which wrote an extensive report on the dispute.

After several delays, the descendants finally got their marker in late 2018 on a highway near the razed village. It came after the historical commission’s state chairman, John Nau — a beer-distribution magnate who donates heavily to Republican officeholders — told staff members to inquire about having markers that described raids that occurred on Anglo ranches around the time of the Porvenir massacre.

“Chairman Nau’s comments were provided as advice about how the county could address local concerns that the whole story was not being told about this period in Texas history,” said Chris Florance, a spokesman for the commission.

While tension persists over how to commemorate the lynchings in Porvenir, there are hundreds of examples of other documented extrajudicial killings of Latinos in states aside from Texas, some in places far from the border.

For instance, in 1919, two Mexican citizens were being held in a jail in Pueblo, Colorado, as suspects in the murder of a police officer. A mob broke into the jail, drove the two men to the edge of town and hanged them during a heavy rainstorm in front of about 100 people. The El Paso Herald reported that Mexico’s consul in Denver investigated the episode and concluded that the mob had lynched the wrong men.

In Albuquerque’s Old Town Plaza in New Mexico, where gift shops and restaurants now cater to tourists, three men identified as Escolastico Perea, Miguel Barrera and California Joe were hanged by a mob of about 200 local residents in 1881 in connection with the murder of a geological surveyor, Col. Charles Potter.

“Though lynching in general is to be condemned, yet to every case there is an exception,” The Santa Fe New Mexican reported at the time. “In the instance of the dastardly murder of Charles Potter, it is very doubtful whether justice can be too swiftly meted out.”

California endured its own eruption of lynchings of Mexicans during the Gold Rush from 1848 to 1855 as competition for mining claims intensified. Anglo miners used mob violence in an effort to expel Mexicans or exact revenge. In one episode in 1851, a mob hanged Josefa Segovia in Downieville, California, after she stabbed an Anglo man who tried to assault her.

Efforts by Anglo settlers to take control of land owned by Mexicans, along with fears that Mexicans could help African-American slaves foment revolts, contributed to the sense of hostility around some lynchings. In the 1850s, several counties in Texas expelled Mexicans, and in 1854, the city of Austin ordered every Mexican to leave unless vouched for by Anglos.

States on the border are grappling yet again with efforts among prominent conservatives to label Latino immigrants a security threat. Some in the borderlands see parallels with earlier outbreaks of anti-Hispanic militancy in the United States, citing examples like the armed vigilantes patrolling the Arizona desert, the expansion of the Border Patrol, and calls for the mass deportation of undocumented Hispanic immigrants.

“With everything that’s happening on the border, it infuriates me that these lynchings were just swept under the rug,” said Brandi Tobar, 19, a college student in San Tan Valley, Arizona, and a descendant of one of the men killed at Porvenir. Tobar is a co-writer of a song, “Village Called Porvenir,” to remember the massacre.

She added, “If we don’t want something like this repeated, it’s about time for the entire country to know the truth.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/us/porvenir-massacre-texas-mexicans.html" id="00c2acaf-1204-39ac-a7c0-999c2a9edddb">The New York Times</a>.

EL PASO, Texas — Arlinda Valencia was at a funeral when an uncle told her a bewildering family secret: An Anglo lynch mob had killed her great-grandfather.

Latinos Were Lynched in West. Descendants Want It Known.

He carried out his attack with an unidentified sharp object, swiftly slashing one of the tires. The suspect, identified as a white man in his 20s, then melted into the neighborhood on foot.

The slashing was one of nearly two dozen attacks on driverless vehicles over the past two years in Chandler, a city near Phoenix where Waymo started testing its vans in 2017. In ways large and small, the city has had an early look at public misgivings over the rise of artificial intelligence, with city officials hearing complaints about everything from safety to possible job losses.

Some people have pelted Waymo vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.

In one of the more harrowing episodes, a man waved a .22-caliber revolver at a Waymo vehicle and the emergency backup driver at the wheel. He told police that he “despises” driverless cars, referencing the killing of a female pedestrian in March in nearby Tempe by a self-driving Uber car.

“There are other places they can test,” said Erik O’Polka, 37, who was issued a warning by police in November after multiple reports that his Jeep Wrangler had tried to run Waymo vans off the road — in one case, driving head-on toward one of the self-driving vehicles until it was forced to come to an abrupt stop.

His wife, Elizabeth, 35, admitted in an interview that her husband “finds it entertaining to brake hard” in front of the self-driving vans, and that she herself “may have forced them to pull over” so she could yell at them to get out of their neighborhood. The trouble started, the couple said, when their 10-year-old son was nearly hit by one of the vehicles while he was playing in a nearby cul-de-sac.

“They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,” said Erik O’Polka, who runs his own company providing information technology to small businesses.

“They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his wife, who helps run the business.

At least 21 such attacks have been leveled at Waymo vans in Chandler, as first reported by The Arizona Republic. Some analysts say they expect more such behavior as the nation moves into a broader discussion about the potential for driverless cars to unleash colossal changes in American society. The debate touches on fears ranging from eliminating jobs for drivers to ceding control over mobility to autonomous vehicles.

“People are lashing out justifiably,” said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at City University of New York and author of the book “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.” He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on strike.

“There’s a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not have our best interests at heart,” Rushkoff said. “Just think about the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially training the artificial intelligence that will replace them.”

The emergency drivers in the Waymo vans that were attacked in various cases told Chandler police that the company preferred not to pursue prosecution of the assailants.

In some of their reports, police officers also said Waymo was often unwilling to provide video of the attacks. In one case, a Waymo employee told police they would need a warrant to obtain video recorded by the company’s vehicles.

Officer William Johnson of the Chandler Police Department described in a June report how the driver of a Chrysler PT Cruiser wove between lanes of traffic while taunting a Waymo van.

A manager at Waymo showed video images of the incident to Johnson but did not allow police to keep them for a more thorough investigation. According to Johnson’s report, the manager said that the company did not want to pursue the matter, emphasizing that Waymo was worried about disruptions of its testing in Chandler.

The report said Waymo was concerned about the effect the attacks were having on its emergency drivers, who are intended to remain in monitoring mode. “The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual mode over the automated mode because of concerns about what the driver of the other vehicle may do,” Johnson wrote.

In a statement, a Waymo spokeswoman said the attacks involved only a small fraction of the more than 25,000 miles that the company’s vans log every day in Arizona.

“Safety is the core of everything we do, which means that keeping our drivers, our riders, and the public safe is our top priority,” said Alexis Georgeson, the Waymo spokeswoman. “Over the past two years, we’ve found Arizonans to be welcoming and excited by the potential of this technology to make our roads safer.”

Georgeson said the company took the safety of its emergency drivers seriously and disputed claims that Waymo was trying to avoid bad publicity by opting against pursuing criminal charges.

CHANDLER, Ariz. — The assailant slipped out of a park around noon one day in October, zeroing in on his target, which was idling at a nearby intersection — a self-driving van operated by Waymo, the driverless-car company spun out of Google.

Simon Romero

Articles written by the author

New Mexico's 'Little Texas' Booms, Igniting Battles Over Oil Windfall

FBI Was Told That Militia in New Mexico Planned to Kill Obama and Clinton

FBI Was Told That Militia in New Mexico Planned to Kill Obama and Clinton

FBI Was Told That Militia in New Mexico Planned to Kill Obama and Clinton

FBI Was Told That Militia in New Mexico Planned to Kill Obama and Clinton

Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum-Seekers at Gunpoint

Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum-Seekers at Gunpoint

La Gordiloca: The Swearing Muckraker Upending Border Journalism

Latinos Were Lynched in West. Descendants Want It Known.

Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars

Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars

Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars

In El Paso, 'Manufactured Crisis' Over Asylum Puts a City on Edge

In El Paso, 'Manufactured Crisis' Over Asylum Puts a City on Edge

Outré Feminist Art? Not in My 'Sleepy Little Town'

Migrant Camp Under El Paso Bridge Has Been Cleared Out

Migrants are Detained Under a Bridge in El Paso. What Happened?

Border Patrol Shuts Down Checkpoints in New Mexico and West Texas

Border Patrol Shuts Down Checkpoints in New Mexico and West Texas

Checkpoints Closed in New Mexico and West Texas Amid Influx of Migrants