Its neo-Nazi participants aside, United for a Sovereign America has always included a rogues' gallery, accepting various extremists and questionable individuals into its meetings and activities in its ongoing effort to influence the immigration debate in Arizona and beyond.
Stephen Lemons
Old-time neo-Nazi Elton Hall pickets on behalf of U.S.A.
County Attorney Andrew Thomas (left) pays a visit to a U.S.A. meeting in 2006. U.S.A. founder Rusty Childress is seen in the background.
Related Content
More About
Past attendees at U.S.A. assemblies have included John Watson, a.k.a. "John the Scot," who claimed to be a member of the White Knights of America, a white separatist group based in Tonopah, and Laine Lawless, a gun-toting pagan from San Francisco known for burning Mexican flags outside Mexican consulates in Phoenix and Tucson.
Scraggly ex-musician "Buffalo" Rick Galeener remains one of the group's most outspoken and active members, despite his pleading guilty in December 2008 for urinating in public in front of a woman and her 2-year-old child near the Macehualli Day Labor Center. Galeener, who is usually armed, regularly refers to non-whites as "monkeys" and maintains a Web site that offers T-shirts with sadistic and sometimes racist messages such as, "Attention Mexico: We Shoot Strays" and "Undocumented Illegal Alien Hunter."
Galeener also once made a vague threat toward U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver on U.S.A.'s Web site, www.immigrationbuzz.com, after Silver issued a temporary order blocking a Cave Creek ordinance against day laborers.
"Nothing is too 'good' for this traitorous judge," opined Galeener. "Remember her name when it comes time to mark an X."
As another example, plus-size erotic masseuse Brandy Baron, one of Sheriff Arpaio's most vocal supporters and a regular at the Macehualli protests, once suggested to videographer and pro-immigration activist Dennis Gilman that Mexicans should be shot as they tried coming over the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
In retaliation for Salvador Reza's leading the protests at Pruitt's, U.S.A began the daily protests at the Macehualli center, near 25th Street and Bell Road, around the beginning of 2008. At a recent six-year anniversary ceremony for Macehualli, about 50 nativist protesters, in an attempt to disrupt the celebration, hurled obscenities at day laborers and their young children as they entered the center for the event.
On U.S.A.'s Web site, immigrants are portrayed as bringing crime, disease, and social decline. The Web site demonizes Mexicans through regular updates and commentary on current events. The reconquista conspiracy theory, which says Mexico is attempting to take back the Southwest by encouraging illegal immigration, is treated as gospel.
Also on immigrationbuzz.com, you can find video of the late Madeleine Cosman, a racist lecturer known for railing against "anchor babies" (otherwise known as American citizens born to undocumented parents) and proffering false claims that Mexican immigrants were responsible for a rise in leprosy cases. Every crime committed by an illegal immigrant earns headline treatment on U.S.A.'s site. As does every press release from Sheriff Joe.
For its anti-immigrant rhetoric and activism, U.S.A. has been labeled a "nativist extremist" group by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report magazine. The label means the organization targets "individual immigrants rather than immigration policies." Both Rusty Childress and Buffalo Rick Galeener have been profiled as nativist leaders by the Montgomery, Alabama-based civil rights publication.
Despite its infamy, U.S.A. has drawn visits from such local, far-right luminaries as State Senator Pearce, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and Arizona GOP Chairman Randy Pullen. But it's Sheriff Arpaio who arguably has the tightest ties to the organization.
Indeed, it was Galeener who instigated Arpaio to bring one of his anti-immigrant sweeps to Bell and Cave Creek roads, near the Macehualli center. Though the center is generally supported by local businesses in the Palomino neighborhood, Galeener was able to find eight businesses, out of hundreds in the busy Bell Road corridor, willing to request an MCSO sweep in writing. The meager support for Galeener from local shops was enough to get the sheriff marching in lockstep with U.S.A.'s agenda.
Not long after the MCSO set up its command center in a parking lot at Bell and Cave Creek Roads on March 27, about 700 anti-Arpaio demonstrators encircled the provisional headquarters, held back by MCSO barricades. About two dozen counter-demonstrators from U.S.A. and the motorcycle group Riders Against Illegal Aliens also showed up. These pro-Arpaio counter-demonstrators received special protection from MCSO deputies while they were there. Both sides threw water bottles and soft-drink cans at each other. At one point, a man with a shotgun slung over his back was arrested by the MCSO after appearing on the scene. Neither side claimed him as one of their own. He seemed to be one of the many disturbed individuals attracted to Arpaio's circus-like sweeps.
During a March 20 address at the Sunnyslope VFW post, Arpaio tipped off U.S.A. that the Bell Road sweep was coming on March 27.
"I appreciate your support," he told the U.S.A. crowd, including neo-Nazi Elton Hall. "You're on the right track. You're doing what you should be doing."
On that night, the crowd was whipped into a fervor when Arpaio informed them that undocumented immigrants were fleeing the state.
"The good news is, all these people are leaving," Arpaio stated. "They're going to other states, or back to Mexico."