Militia border violence?

NY Times:

“Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband!” the woman shouted to the 911 dispatcher. “They’re coming back in! They’re coming back in!”

Multiple gunshots are then heard on a tape of the call.

The woman, Gina Gonzalez, survived the attack after arming herself with her husband’s handgun, but both he and their 10-year-old daughter died.

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.

The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.

The authorities say that the three suspects were after money and drugs that they intended to use to finance vigilantism, and that members of the group may have been involved in at least one other home invasion, in California.

“There was an anticipation that there would be a considerable amount of cash at this location,” said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, since, he said, Ms. Gonzalez’s husband, Raul J. Flores, had previously been involved in narcotics trafficking, an assertion the family denies.

A Pima County public defender representing Ms. Forde had no comment on the case. Nor did lawyers for the other suspects, Jason E. Bush, 34, and Albert R. Gaxiola, 42. All three remain in custody, charged with first-degree murder, assault and burglary.

Merrill Metzger, who worked for the group for six months just as it was getting started in 2007, said Ms. Forde had often traveled from Washington to Arizona with weapons. In March, while stopping over at his home in Redding, Calif., she presented a plan for the group to undertake, Mr. Metzger, her half-brother, said in a telephone interview.

“She was sitting here talking about how she was going to start an underground militia and rob drug dealers,” he said.

Mr. Metzger quit the group, alarmed, he said, by a number of things, including Ms. Forde’s demand for extreme loyalty, right down to the choice of cuisine.

“I had to take an oath, and part of the oath was that I couldn’t eat Mexican food,” he said. “That’s when red flags went up all over for me. That seemed like prejudice.”

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What? No Mexican food? That is just plain weird. I used to dream about eating Mexican food when I was in Vietnam. Others would talk about missing ice cream or beer. For me it was Mexican food. It just was not included in C rations and it probably is not included in MREs.

What is troubling about this story is how it seems to hit all the liberal hot buttons about fears of militia actions in general and border protection in particular. There have been thousands of volunteers to stop illegal entry into the US and none of them are known to engage in illegal activity such as this home invasion, yet the story suggest they may be. It certainly does not try to separate those volunteers from this activity.

Look, favoring the rule of law includes not only the laws against illegal entry, but other laws against home invasions, robbery and murder. It is not about being against Mexicans or Mexican food. It is about getting the government to enforce all the laws and taking our immigration laws seriously. The latter is something the Times seems to ignore.