VIDEO: Suspected 9-Year-Old Killer Shawna Forde a Minuteman With Ties to FAIR

America's Voice Blog

Posted 06/15/09 at 04:24pm

Shawna Shawna Forde, the alleged ringleader and one of three suspects arrested in a deadly home invasion in Arizona on Friday, heads up a border vigilante group known as the Minuteman American Defense (MAD). Forde is suspected of having plotted and executed the kiilling of a nine-year-old girl named Brisenia Flores in order to raise money for her vigilante group. The Huffington Post reports:

PHOENIX — Two of three people arrested in a southern Arizona home invasion that left a little girl and her father dead had connections to a Washington state anti-illegal immigration group that conducts border watch activities in Arizona.

Jason Eugene Bush, 34, Shawna Forde, 41, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, have been charged with two counts each of first-degree murder and other charges, said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz.

Since Forde's Minuteman connections became clear on Friday, a new video of Forde speaking on behalf of the quasi-mainstream organization, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), has surfaced. In it, Forde addresses a 2006 townhall in Yakima, Washington, as a Minuteman and FAIR activist. Watch it:

Blogger Dave Bennion had this to say about FAIR today:

Immigration restrictionist John Tanton founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 1979. Since then, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, FAIR has had documented ties to white supremacy groups and accepted money from the eugenicist Pioneer Fund. FAIR representatives are nonetheless routinely quoted by mainstream newspapers on immigration stories and welcomed onto cable news shows.

While it's clear that FAIR is not the "mainstream" group it claims to be, it is unclear whether Forde was a paid employee, volunteer representative, or some other kind of spokesperson for the organization. It is clear, however, that Members of congress and mainstream reporters should think twice before citing the organization FAIR.

As one conservative blog points out in a post about the murder entitled, "What Right Wing Extremists?," Forde's case is yet another example of anti-immigration and nativist rhetoric taken to the extreme, as predicted by a recent DHS report.

That DHS report on right wing extremism keeps getting more relevant. Here’s the website of Minutemen American Defense, complete with rants about “subhuman Mexicans.”

UPDATE at 6/14/09 11:16:02 am:

Apparently, the motivation for the crime was to get money and drugs to fund their anti-immigration group:

Two of the three people arrested in connection with the May 30 murders of an Arivaca man and his daughter headed up a splinter Minuteman group, and were looking for drugs and money to fund their efforts to keep illegal immigrants and drug runners out of the country, sheriff’s officials said.

For more information on Forde, check out the Anti-Defamation League's latest background report.

By Jackie Mahendra
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