Originally Posted by
Cletus
There is a lot more to this incident than has been widely reported and the arrest is just being used as a smokescreen to cover the real story.
Hopkins and his group have intercepted and detained over 5,600 illegal aliens coming across the border in that area in the last 2 months. If you go with the lower average of 2,500 a month, you are talking about 30,000 invaders coming into this country at that one location over the course of a year.
What Hopkins was arrested for was NOT detaining the illegals. He was arrested for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. No one else in the group was arrested. What they were doing was not illegal. The Governor declared Hopkins a "violent felon", which is not true. He is a felon. She got that part right, but he was convicted of fraud. He has never been charged or accused of a violent crime.
Even though the Border Patrol issued a statement saying they don't condone or support the actions of private groups rounding up and detaining criminals crossing the border, the reality is that the guys on the ground had no complaints about what was happening.
Hopkins was correctly arrested for being in possession of a firearm. He committed a crime and needs to face the consequences, but the real story is much bigger than him. The Governor of New Mexico says there no problem at the border, yet a group of private citizens was able to round up, detain and turn over the Border Patrol over 5,600 criminals crossing the border in a pretty small area in less than 2 months. THAT is real story being buried by the press and dismissed by the Governor's office.