Who paid who? And how much?
Plus-- an update on rumored Azerbaijani Terrorist Encounter in Arizona
Good morning, friends,
A lot of curiosities in front of us this week. Some local, some not. Let’s start with the biggest thing— the apparent decline in foot traffic in the Eagle Pass area.
Many are probably assuming that it is due to the efforts of DPS and Texas Military Forces and the shutdown of Shelby Park. That’s not the worst take ever, but if one is paying attention, you’re also aware of a huge increase in traffic in Arizona and California right now as the Mexican Government clamps down hard on Texas-bound migrants.
While it is possible that they’re trying to avoid issues on the Texas Border for their own reasons, we find recent analysis by reporter and immigration expert Todd Bensman to be very persuasive. Bensman is highlighting the recent visits to Mexico by White House officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and how the White House seems to have made some kind of secret deal with Mexico. No one knows how much the White House is paying Mexico for this and no one is talking. It’s worth noting, Blinken would seem to already have his hands full with the ongoing meltdowns in the Middle East and the Red Sea— yet the White House apparently views the need to quiet the border down as important enough to send him to Mexico too.
Weird.
The officials returned to Washington reporting fuzzy platitudes and no details about whatever deal they struck with President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
But while the US press has been silent, Mexican media is brimming with reports of what happened afterward.
Mexico suddenly started doing some serious anti-immigration work, the kind necessary to cut down on the shocking border images that front-running Donald Trump could use to help win this year’s election.
Among the news:
Mexican law enforcement officials are rounding up immigrants in the country’s north and shipping them by bus and airplane to southern cities like Tapachula in Chiapas State and Villahermosa in Tabasco State. They are all expected to go home or stay put alongside those continuing to enter from Guatemala. They’ll be held back to wait for a molasses-slow bureaucracy to approve individual travel papers.
In a story headlined “Truncated American Dream: Learn about Miguel’s Story,” the Tabasco Herald described how Mexican immigration agents rounded up Guatemalan Don Miguel and his six children from a long-standing migrant camp in Matamoros on December 31.
They shipped him to Villahermosa, where he has requested a ride back to Guatemala.
To eliminate another obvious draw, Mexican authorities have emptied and then bulldozed at least one longstanding migrant camp, the sprawling one in Matamoros across the Rio Grande from Brownsville and dug deep anti-pedestrian trenches to deny further easy access to popular crossings there. It was done “under U.S. pressure,” one Mexican newspaper said.
Perhaps one of Mexico’s most impactful slow-down measures is that, finally, it is doing something about “La Bestia,” the system of cargo trains that have super-powered the Biden border crisis for three years running by transporting hundreds of thousands of migrants from deep southern Mexico to its northern border cities.
Mexican media shows that Mexico’s military is blockading railyards all over the country and rousting immigrants already on the trains.
—Reporter Todd Bensman, in the New York Post
From there, Bensman takes a look at what the White House might be paying Mexico— and some of the ways Mexico’s President has appeared to backstab the White House over the course of the Border Crisis.
A real weird one catching our eye, as Monday the Justice Department charged an Iranian and two Canadians with plotting the murder-for-hire of two former Iranians now living in Maryland.
One of the plotters is described as a ‘fully-patched’ member of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang.
The Department of Justice announced the indictment against 49-year-old Naji Sharifi Zindashti of Iran, 43-year-old Damion Patrick John Ryan of Canada, and 29-year-old Adam Richard Pearson, also of Canada, who allegedly conspired with each other between December 2020 and March 2021 to kill two Maryland residents who previously fled from Iran.
The men allegedly used the encrypted messaging service "SkyECC" to hire individuals to travel to the U.S., carry out hits, discuss identities and locations of potential victims, plan logistics and mechanics of how to carry out the murders and to negotiate payments for completing the job in Maryland.
"Today’s charges show a pattern of Iranian groups trying to murder U.S. residents on U.S. soil," Assistant Director Suzanne Turner of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division said. "Mr. Zindashti and his accomplices’ alleged plot is reprehensible, and the FBI will not tolerate such acts against U.S. residents, and we will continue to pursue these individuals until they are brought to the U.S. to face justice."
—Greg Wehner, FOX News
It may sound like an odd pairing—some shadowy figure, likely affiliated with a foreign government, working with a Hell’s Angel to kill dissidents overseas— but it’s apparently fairly common.
Intelligence analysts can point to decades past when Communist Anarchists used to work with Palestinian militants, and eco-terrorists, working with Muslim bombers in Europe.
Time now for a correction, of sorts. Readers may recall we actually used all of the best weasel words to avoid saying that a strange and recent encounter in Arizona definitely was with a suspected Azerbaijani terrorist named Movsum Samadov.
We used words and phrases like ‘others say,’ and ‘appears to be.’ We haven’t gone back to review the newsletter, but we also may’ve said something like “sure looks like him!’ referencing some of the photographs others had produced at the time.
Well, weasel words or not, it’s worth a correction, and definitely worth an update.
Apparently Samadov has been located in Azerbaijan where he was recently released from prison. And, after more than a decade in lock-up, he’s much visibly older and heavier. Also— the man apparently has a large-ish mole on one side of his face that is missing on the original border crosser mistaken for a younger version of Samadov.
The organization Politifact has a fairly smug breakdown and review of things on their website here, though we first saw corrections somewhere on X/Twitter.
Here’s a look at another photo montage, comparing the unidentified migrant with much younger photos of Samadov.
And finally this morning, we should probably say something about this trucker convoy that’s supposed to be passing though on the way to Quemado.
Here’s some copy we’ve written that’ll be appearing in the Kinney County Post, Thursday:
Anti-open border activists hope to put a spotlight on the town of Quemado this week, leading a convoy of truckers and others to the "Cornerstone Children's Ranch" in Quemado.
Quemado is a small community in Maverick County, roughly equidistant to Eagle Pass, Del Rio, and Brackettville.
Organizers raised more than $100,000 dollars via Give Send Go, after appearing on the Tucker Carlson show on X, formerly known as twitter.
They're calling it the "Take Our Border Back," convoy, and it's attracting criticism mostly from the left, but also from some concerned observers on the right. Elements of the convoy are also going to Yuma, AZ and San Ysidro, CA.
Critics of the plans point out that the convoys pose the potential for a significant distraction for local law enforcement and will put additional pressure on already challenging rural roads, potentially creating situations that will make it even easier for Cartel smugglers to move drugs or illegal aliens.
One of the organizers announced online that the Convoy isn't meant as any kind of a blockade. “We don’t want to cause any problems for law enforcement or the National Guard… we don’t want to put anyone in danger,” they said, in a video statement.
The convoy is expected to arrive in Quemado on February 2nd.
Reports online suggest the convoy's numbers and membership has hit a snag, with fears of some kind of federal mischief possibly targeting participants.
—An excerpt of copy written for publication in the Kinney County Post
We wrote that on Monday night. We don’t mind confessing that a more thorough and critical examination of the convoy can be found at the Center Square.
You can also find other publications like Wired-dot-com that seem to be dunking on the convoy and its organizers, already pronouncing it “a complete mess.”
We should note however, some basic glaring errors in Wired’s coverage—saying the Convoy is heading to “Quemado in Catron County.” No such place. There is a Catron County, but it’s in New Mexico. Quemado is in Maverick County— and it is on the border— contrary to Wired’s “complete mess” of a story asserting that it is not.
On Monday morning, the organizers of the Take Our Border Back convoy kicked off their road trip to the Texas–Mexico border in Virginia Beach. Though they claimed that up to 40,000 trucks would be joining, only 20 vehicles made up the convoy as it rolled into Jacksonville, Florida, 14 hours later. The promised support had not materialized—not a single truck showed up, tires were reportedly slashed, participants got lost, and paranoia struck the group. In short, the convoy was a complete mess.
The convoy was organized last week as a show of support for Texas governor Greg Abbott and his decision to defy the federal government and President Joe Biden about the installation of razor wire along the Texas–Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas. While at least one organizer initially said they planned to hunt down migrants along the border in collaboration with sympathetic members of law enforcement, the group appeared to walk back that assertion on Monday, issuing a statement that the convoy would not be heading to the border at all but instead going to Quemado, a tiny town in Catron County, Texas. The group’s website, however, still lists the route of the convoy as “Virginia Beach, VA, to Eagle Pass,” and members of the planning group on Telegram still say they are going to the Texas border.
The organizers also repeatedly stated that the event was peaceful, though online chats in a related Telegram group show members discussing “exterminating” migrants. A known white nationalist who was kicked out of the People’s Convoy in 2022, Ryan Sanchez, is among those most active in the group. Sanchez was previously a Marine Corp reservist who says he was kicked out after he was reported to have been demonstrating alongside the Rise Above Movement, an alt-right street-fighting group that took part in the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, which led to the death of one counter protester.
—Reporter David Gilbert, WIRED Magazine
So there you have it folks— at least one possible weirdo is apparently maybe involved in the convoy, on the basis of one silly Telegram message group of navel gazers that this reporter says is somehow affiliated with the Convoy.
Is it? Who knows.
It may be that this Ryan Sanchez has nothing to do with it and is merely posing. But, let’s assume that there are a couple crazies traveling with this convoy. Odds are much higher that there will also be plenty of normal, decent folks showing up who are just plain frustrated with this situation and desperate to show some kind of meaningful support for Texas.
We personally feel they should have stayed home— that efforts would have been better spent lobbying US Senators not to pass this awful Senate border bill we keep hearing rumors about. But we can certainly empathize with folks feeling a need to do something that feels ‘real.’
On that note, we’ll call it square.
We considered doing a thing here at the end with the 1970’s film “Convoy” and the attendant theme song… but boy… just too hackneyed. It’s beyond our creativity at this early an hour to make it work. Seriously. The song is awful.
Just awful.
Don’t click the link. Whatever you do, don’t. It’s terrible.
Don’t be fooled by the album cover either. That Kris Kristofferson lookin’ dude? Ain’t. As in ain’t Kris Kristofferson.
As always, no one should mistake this humble newsletter for any kind of an official statement on behalf of Kinney County, despite our employment there.
It is produced without oversight and any errors, mistakes, or other misdeeds are entirely our own.
Have a great morning— we’ll be back soon enough, until then, keep it high and tight.