Mercenaries on the Border
Where there's will, there's way
Life is full of choices. If you’re blessed, you’re choosing between good and bad options. If you’re not, you’re usually choosing between bad and worse. As I write this, Kinney County commissioners are considering a proposal from a Private Military Contractor, or PMC for short, that could see them putting small numbers of ex-military security personnel in place along a 16 mile stretch of the border, with the power to arrest.
How’s that work? Good question.
Ray Zavadil, an employee of "Garrison Trading Associates" was representing the PMC at a recent commissioners court meeting on Aug 9. Addressing the commissioners, he said while it's too early to tell what ultimate shape their efforts would take, he stressed that whatever their duties wind up being, it will be at the behest and direction of Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe.
We should emphasize just how far out the proposal is. So far as anyone here in this County can tell, nothing like it has been done anywhere on the border before. Volunteer militias are active in Arizona, with stated goals of disrupting cartel operations. Their efforts are characterized in some areas as vigilantism. In 2013 an article appeared in the New York Times, detailing talks in McAllen about possibly hiring private security to help border enforcement, but it appears nothing came of it.
However, it seems much of the groundwork laid down then, is providing a blueprint for Garrison Trading Associates’ proposal.
In Kinney County, Garrison Trading would be operating under license from the Texas Department of Public Safety, as a private security operation, similar in some ways to armed security guards that protect armored cars and other high value objects and locations. It requires licensing, and about $100,000 dollars insurance. Garrison Trading says they are in the process of getting that licensing and will be insured for more than $1 Million dollars. As licensed private security, they would be able to arrest people committing felonies in front of them. The state is in the process of classifying human trafficking as a felony offense.
Zavadil says if it all comes together, they'll start small, with a team of about a dozen or less. "[We want to] give our initial team the experience they need, learning the county and the hot spots," said Zavadil, who described a process by which the initial team of operators would ride along with Sheriff's deputies and learn the community and the terrain along the border, before turning around and training still more operators when and if the time comes and they're authorized to ramp up their presence.
Commissioners court was hosting a slightly larger than usual audience, that included some Texans from outside the county who desperately would like to see something like this go forward, and put pressure on the state to do more.
Michael Miller is from Central Texas, and operates a hunting ranch in Uvalde County, right next to the Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 90. During the public comment portion of the meeting, he told Commissioners he believes something has to be done, before it's too late.
"There's a price on my head. They've threatened to kill my daughter," he said, describing his confrontations with what he believes to be cartel smugglers cutting through his ranch to avoid the checkpoint.
A ranching family from Zavala County, near Crystal City was also in attendance. They asked not to be named in the paper, as they described their frustrations at home. The wife, who we'll call "Regina," not her real name, seemed the most upset as she described her daily routine. "I don't set foot outside the house, unless I'm locked and loaded." Regina appeared to be unarmed while in the Courthouse, but it would be safe to assume she had a loaded weapon waiting for her in her truck. Her husband stayed nearby, verbally supporting her statements as she described what seems to her to be a failure in Zavala County so far, to do anything at all about the increased border traffic happening on their ranch or their neighbors' ranches.
Before any PMC could begin operating in Kinney County, the financials would have to be squared away. To put it bluntly, Kinney County doesn't even begin to approach having the kind of money to hire a PMC-- even a small one.
Zavadil says their plan relies on receiving a letter of intent from the County, which they would then take to their bank and open up a line of credit to begin operations. At that point, he says, they would then crowd-fund their efforts with a website. Zavadil and others seem highly confident that concerned U.S. Citizens from around the country would leap at the chance to donate and help fund border security
Crowdfunding and kickstarter campaigns have paid for movies to be made, books to be published, and even factories to produce all manner of industrial goods-- but so far, no one seems to be aware of them being leveraged in this kind of fashion. In a way, the more poetically minded might call it a modern day equivalent to the birth of the Texas Revolution, when Tennessee volunteers would stencil "G.T.T." on their doors, telling neighbors they'd "Gone To Texas" to fight. In 2021, instead of bringing a body and a rifle, send cash instead.
As crazy as it sounds, when you start to dig in, it just may be a case of being crazy like a fox. Big money individuals are already financing the deployment of National Guard troopers to Texas from the State of South Dakota. Republican Governor Kristi Noem made the announcement back in July, saying the money to send as many as 50 troops was coming from the Willis and Reba Johnson Foundation. The Johnsons are billionaires from Tennessee who donate to conservative causes across the country. Willis Johnson made his money as the founder of “Copart,” an auto parts salvage company, and is retired from the U.S. Army and a Vietnam Veteran.
People concerned about the proposal from Garrison Trading have plenty of what ifs to work with. An afternoon with Google, searching for “Garrison Trading Associates” doesn't really divulge much information. The head of the company is a man named Rex Morford. His social media indicates he's worked for Northrop Grumman, a major U.S. Defense Contractor that is perhaps most famous for designing and building the F-14 Tomcat, a plane showcased in the film Top Gun with Tom Cruise. Prior to that, Morford's own resume indicates a post military career spent working for several other private military contractors, providing translation services at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan, and personal security services for VIPS in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti before that.
If one looks closer, however, it seems as if the organization doesn't appear to own any real estate of its own. The company headquarters appears to be a private home in the Colorado Springs area. It's a fine home, and is relatively modest by the standards of its neighborhood, 4 bedrooms and 2 baths. Not too cheap, but not the most expensive in the neighborhood either. The company's stated Houston, Texas branch office shares the same address as an international logistics provider. While producing an early version of this story for the Kinney County Post, yours truly contacted Mr. Morford and advised him to consider removing the address and scrubbing it from the web, out of an abundance of caution. The Cartels can operate nationwide, and not all of their people are wearing obvious face tattoos.
These things may seem spooky or even troubling. When one thinks of a PMC and private mercenaries, the images that are conjured thanks to CNN and other broadcasters are those associated with famous or infamous organizations like "Blackwater" and "Triple Canopy." The mind's eye recalls video of thick necked and bearded men on lavish and extensive rifle ranges and training grounds, uparmored technicals and guntrucks bristling with belt-fed machine guns and light cannons. Perhaps even tastefully decorated business offices spring to mind.
There's no sign of that kind of ostentatiousness in Ray Zavadil. The man looks most like a weather-beaten biker granddad, with a snow-white mustache, heavily tattooed arms, and a plain-spoken manner. He also looks capable of hiking halfway to Camp Wood and back before needing some water.
Supporters of the idea of a PMC on the border say it's not uncommon for smaller organizations to save their money domestically, and use private addresses for mail and licensing purposes. Money spent on fancy real estate is money they could spend on body armor, or most frequently, salaries for highly skilled people.
It is a difficult choice to make, weighing imagined risks and what ifs. What happens if there's shooting? What happens if people are killed? What kind of unexpected financial exposure might the County find in an arrangement like this? Will there be lawsuits? It seems almost impossible to plan for every eventuality.
Passing on the proposal has its own risks too. What if private citizens looking for whitetail deer on area ranches come face to face with armed smugglers? One imagines it wouldn't take much for such a situation to end tragically. Perhaps the only way to prevent that, would be to basically cancel hunting season in Kinney County and hope the State and Federal Governments will eventually come up with some kind of a solution. It doesn't require much thought to realize that would be financially ruinous, not only for those area landowners relying on hunting season to keep them going, but also all of the local restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations and other businesses that rely on the hunting economy.
Sheriff Brad Coe says as of Aug 9, arrests made in Kinney County account for about 25% of the current population at the Dolph Briscoe Unit in Dilley, the repurposed state prison that's housing illegal immigrants picked up by DPS and Sheriff's deputies along the border. The Briscoe Unit has about 1,000 beds in it. As of the end of last week, it had about 235 bunks filled.
"Between August 4th and 8th, 56 illegal aliens have been apprehended and charged for Criminal Trespass, all have been booked and transported to Dilley," said Sheriff Coe, highlighting the sheer volume of numbers they're seeing, even as one has to keep in mind, for every illegal alien caught and arrested, the majority are slipping through the cracks. Daily, DPS troopers and Sheriff’s deputies co-ordinate the processing of illegal aliens underneath a tree, next to an old park bench, out in front of the 14 bed Kinney County Jail. The men are processed by a local magistrate and then conveyed to Dilley in vans which make constant shuttling trips back and forth.
The Sheriff also announced at the same meeting that about 300 National Guardsmen are being sent to man observation posts in Maverick County.
"If they can send National Guardsmen, they can take them away too," said County Attorney Brent Smith, one of the leading voices demanding more from the State and Federal Government. He briefed Commissioners on the current status of a federal lawsuit in Galveston County that is meant to force the Biden Administration to overturn recent orders to the Border Patrol, that he and other participants in the lawsuit say are partly responsible for the current crisis. He said there may be a preliminary hearing in Galveston in as little as 2 weeks.
Commissioners meet again in about 1 week, they may issue a letter of intent then, or delay further, or take no action, which would amount to declining the offer.
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*An image associated with this post, showing armed men in desert scrub territory is taken from the “Arizona Border Recon” website. ABR is perhaps the largest and most visible volunteer group conducting alleged vigilante operations on the Arizona border.