7 extremist and hate groups active in Arizona

In 2017, after a white supremacist used a car to mow down a crowd of protesters following a tiki torch-lit neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, then-President Donald Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides.” In 2021, right-wing extremists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election and illegitimately install Trump as president.

Suffice it to say that hate groups and anti-government extremists have always been attracted to Trump. Now that their man (and Elon Musk) is back in power and dismantling the federal government with abandon, experts who track extremist groups are acutely concerned they will feel emboldened to leave the shadows and operate openly.

Those experts have their eyes on Arizona.

“Arizona is a hotbed,” Rachel Goldwasser, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Phoenix New Times.

In July, self-described “Nazi hunter” Kristofer Goldsmith gave a workshop with local Arizona veterans about how to fight back against extremist groups. He warned that if Trump was elected, things could become authoritarian very quickly and that the white supremacist gangs he’s been hunting for four years would operate without a leash.

While hate groups — neo-Nazi, white supremacist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and so on — dominate the extremist landscape in the American South and Northeast, they play a secondary role in the Southwest.

“In Arizona, anti-government groups tend to be the most active,” Goldwasser said.

Phoenix New Times interviewed Goldwasser to gain a better understanding of what Arizona’s most troubling extremist groups are up to, and what kind of threat they pose to the public and constitutional order. The SPLC tracks the activity of a broad spectrum of hate and anti-government extremist groups. Its data is publicly available on its Hate Map.

But what constitutes activity?

“As long as we’ve determined they’re actually out there pushing their propaganda and are recruiting or engaging people and are trying to or successfully radicalizing people, we define that as activity,” Goldwasser said. “The groups we look at can be very different in terms of their activities, even if their ideologies are similar.”

Some groups are more official and work in legal and policy spaces, whereas militias tend to be active on the ground, conducting firearms or other physical training.

Here are the most concerning groups based in or operating in Arizona.

Arizona Border Recon

In 2011, Tim Foley founded Arizona Border Recon, which operates near Arivaca. While the group had around 200 volunteer members as of 2016, it’s unclear how many it has in its ranks now.

The group says it shares intelligence with federal officials to stop illegal immigration. But it’s been known to go beyond that. Court records show that the group has detained and held people near the border while prosecutors have not brought charges against them. Humanitarian groups have also reported being harassed by the vigilantes.

“We consider them vigilantes because they don’t have a government role at all,” Goldwasser said.

Veterans on Patrol

Formed in 2015 by Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, the group is headquartered in Pima County. In Arizona, the group patrols the border with Mexico as a vigilante group, engaging in acts for which they lack authority, Goldwasser said.

Veterans on Patrol has removed water containers put down by the nonprofit Humane Borders. Its members have also detained migrants at the border, collected information on the migrants and their sponsors, and then visited some of those sponsors at their homes for “wellness checks” that are little more than acts of intimidation.

“There have not been any criminal charges over any of this behavior," Goldwasser said. "They’ve also worked with a wide variety of border vigilantes or people interested in vigilantism."

That includes QAnon-aligned groups, neo-Nazi-aligned groups and the Proud Boys.

In 2018, Meyer was arrested for the third time that year for trespassing just after he pointed law enforcement to what he said was a child sex trafficking ring that involved Hillary Clinton. In reality, it was just a homeless encampment. Police found zero evidence of human trafficking.

Recently the militia railed against and threatened the U.S. military, claiming it orchestrated the hurricane that devastated North Carolina with weather manipulation technology.

“I don’t think he’s, like, a stable character. He’s very nomadic,” Goldwasser said of Meyer. “That’s part of the issue — sometimes wherever he takes up residency is only because he lost housing in one place and moved somewhere else. But he’s also charismatic in that he’s able to get a lot of people — who, frankly, don’t seem particularly stable — to follow along with him.”

Oath Keepers (Yavapai County Preparedness Team)

Arizona’s former chapter of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing anti-government militia that played a critical role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, began calling itself the Yavapai County Preparedness Team after breaking from the national organization. Yet much has stayed the same.

“They still sort of maintain themselves as Oath Keepers. Like, they have Oath Keepers signs up at their meetings, they wear Oath Keepers uniforms,” Goldwasser said. “So they’re not really removed from the concept or mission or agenda at all.”

The group is led by Jim Arroyo, who Goldwasser said is trying to expand the group’s reach. Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes has ties to the group and spoke at one of its meetings in September 2022.

YCPT meets regularly and also seems to be preparing for disasters. Its website notes that the group has formed home medicine, engineering and security teams and welcomes “anyone who sees the possibility of disasters and the need to be ready for them.”

Mayhem Solutions Group LLC

A little-known private company that has faced legal issues for advertising unlicensed private security and investigation services, Mayhem Solutions is based in Casa Grande. Its president, Shawn Wilson, has reportedly fled the country, but Goldwasser suspects he might return now that Trump is in power.

Wilson has run reconnaissance missions at the U.S.-Mexico border and engaged in anti-immigrant vigilantism. It’s possible Trump’s government could award contracts to the group.

Proud Boys

The fascist militant organization, whose members were at and played a key role in orchestrating the Jan. 6 insurrection, operates locally in small chapters.

There are two known chapters of Proud Boys in Arizona: a South Phoenix chapter and a Highlands chapter, which operates in northern Arizona.

In 2023, Highlands Proud Boys member Christopher Roach drove three men to an area along the U.S.-Mexico border near Sasabe, meeting up with members of Veterans on Patrol. They harassed volunteers with Sahuarita Samaritans of Green Valley, a group providing aid to migrants. They also collected personal info from a group of migrants they encountered and distributed Bibles.

They were eventually stopped by Customs and Border Patrol agents who threatened to arrest them.

Patriot Front

One of the most active white supremacist and far-right groups in the country, Patriot Front has been responsible for thousands of hate incidents since 2019 and is basically a modern-day, more militaristic variant of the Ku Klux Klan. It has members based in Arizona.

In July 2022, the group was marching in Boston and attacked a Black musician. It was ordered to pay $2.7 million to the man last month.

According to SPLC’s Flyering Map, which notes which groups’ pamphlets, posters and flyers have been spotted in the wild, Patriot Front propaganda makes up the majority of the material SPLC tracks.

Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association

Started by former Graham County Sheriff Richard Mack, this organization was the center of an investigation by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and ASU Cronkite’s Howard Center in 2023.

The Arizona-based group teaches law enforcement officers that sheriffs have ultimate control and can overrule federal law. The group expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, crossing the country on a tour.

“It was like the best thing that could have happened to them, just because so many sheriffs were grappling with enforcing laws and they came in being like, ‘You don’t have to! It’s not constitutional if you say it isn’t,’” Goldwasser said.

Mack stepped down to focus on health issues in 2023, appointing Sam Bushman as CEO. Bushman operates Liberty News Radio, which has syndicated programs that have hosted guests who are openly pro-Confederacy, pro-Nazi, white nationalist and anti-government.