Members of a trucker convoy calling itself the “Army of God” are making their way to San Diego in a coordinated attempt to protest at ports of entry along the length of the southern border.
Calls to attend the “Take Our Border Back” rally went out about a month ago, when a group of people who are prominent within the far right “patriot” world started organizing the convoy.
“Make your Voices heard America!! Roll with us!!” says the website, adding: “From Virginia Beach, VA to Eagle Pass, TX From Eagle Pass, TX to Yuma, AZ From San Ysidro CA to Yuma, AZ. It would take over 700,000 vehicles to line the border. How amazing would that be!!!”
“God’s army is rising up,” life coach and professional influencer Kim Yeater said on the planning call, according to Vice. “We all have been chosen for this time.”
Other organizers have, like Yeater, used extreme and often racist rhetoric about “invasions” and “swarms” at the border, as well as pushing election denial, QAnon, and the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that a white majority is in the process of being “replaced” by non-white people and immigrants.
The event website lists among its supporters a number of self-described patriot groups and churches, including Victory Outreach Church of San Ysidro.
The convoy was organized at around the same time that the Texas National Guard seized Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, and are preventing the federal government from processing migrants there.
This has the potential to escalate an already fraught dispute between that state and the federal government over who controls the country’s national borders.
The border event shares members and organizers with 2022’s “Freedom Convoy,” which attempted to similarly “take back D.C.” in protest of a nonexistent vaccine mandate, but which quickly devolved into a litany of right-wing, disinformation-fuelled grievances, during which participants spent three weeks driving in circles around the Beltway.
They are scheduled to begin their convoy next week and are currently planning to protest at their destinations, including San Ysidro, on Feb. 3.