While U.S. media attention has, for a second time in a year, turned to a massive migrant “caravan” curiously timed to arrive on the United States border just ahead of the contentious midterm elections, very few so-called journalists have bothered to report on the organizers of said caravan, its organizers, and their decades-long history.
After doing some investigative work, it can now be revealed that the Pueblos Sin Frontera (People Without Borders/PSF) — the group that organized a caravan back in April — has a track record of links with the international Quaker movement, historical Democratic Party donors, U.S. government bureaucrats, and perhaps even a senior Mexican diplomat.
In order to understand the nature of this “refugee” caravan, we have to consider first that groups like PSF and their sister organizations like the Casa de los Amigos and the Popular Assembly of Migrant Families (APOFAM) have long been involved in advocacy surrounding the destruction of U.S. borders.
As far back as 1939, U.S.-based organizations like the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which still lists the Casa de los Amigos on its website, were plowing money into the Casa de los Amigos that now provides offices to APOFAM in Mexico.
Their website was updated on December 4, 2012, declaring:
On the first of November, the House welcomed a new partner: APOFAM, (the Popular Assembly of Migrant Families). We are very happy to give you the keys to the famous office in the main courtyard. They will use the House as their office, base of organization and a space for meetings and events.
The group’s links, funding sources, and history are important because they all seem to be linked through one leading activist named Rodrigo Abeja, widely quoted though scarcely investigated by the U.S. media.
Abeja, who appears prominently in shared posts on the APOFAM Facebook page, was quoted by Vice News in 2013, which listed him as one of the group’s key organizers.
From Santo Domingo, Guerrera — 270 miles south of Mexico City — Abeja, APOFAM, and his own organization Pueblos Sin Frontera have long-organized the migrant caravans that have become the left’s outrage-creator du jour.
But these groups are not simply active within Central America. Their reach already penetrates deep into the United States, with local chapters prevalent in Arizona, Texas, California, and as far as New York City, where a recent article detailed how APOFAM members and supporters cheered on as an illegal alien had his ankle tracker removed by a preacher in a central Manhattan church.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) searches also revealed that once-honored members of the Casa de los Amigos Quaker house in Mexico include donors to Democratic Party candidates such as Harry Mitchell, John Kerry, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer and the Democratic National Committee. None of the U.S. supporters of Casa de los Amigos were Republican donors.
Another previously listed staff member of the Quaker house is Bridget Moix, who now serves as the U.S. Senior Representative and Head of Advocacy for an organization called Peace Direct, which in turn is funded in part by the British government’s Big Lottery Fund, as well as the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) which is itself funded by the U.S. federal government.
Moix served as Atrocity Prevention Fellow with the government’s USAID programme in their department of Conflict Management and Mitigation. She has also taught Quaker studies at Haverford College, Columbia University, George Washington University and Eastern Mennonite University.
Her name was listed on the Casa de los Amigos website around the same time as that of Daniel Hernandez Joseph, listed as being from Washington, D.C., and whose profile in migration studies matches that of the current Mexican ambassador to Greece.
Joseph was listed as a Diplomat in Residence at the American University in Washington, D.C., before going on to a series of jobs with the Mexican government, culminating in his current ambassadorship.
While Mexico’s embassy in Greece has not responded to request for comment, the Daniel Hernandez Joseph on the Casa de los Amigos website disappeared in early 2012, just after his resume on their official website lists him taking a job as Consul General of Mexico in Boston.
A thesis written by Joseph in 2007/8 states:
The [migration] policy of the United States [must] be more congruent with the awareness of their own historical responsibility in shaping these challenges, abandoning the vision that the origin of the problems in its territory is completely external, and venturing more into a scheme of cooperation and shared responsibility according to the determination of national public policies.
The wording of the thesis is similar to that of APOFAM’s and PSF’s press releases.
Although Abeja’s anti-Trump Facebook posts – another point not considered by establishment journalists – are more colloquial, the organizations themselves issue professional press statements.
Earlier this year, APOFAM demanded of the “governments of Central America, Mexico, and the United States of America” that “the borders be opened because we are citizens just like the people of the countries we are in and/or travel.”
While major news organizations have failed to cover the well-funded, well-organized, and well-networked nature of these groups and their reach into the United States, some local outlets have given more study to the subject.
The Southwestern College Sun — a student paper — detailed the links between the recently arrested director of PSF, Irineo Mujica, and another group operating from within the U.S. named Border Angels. Enrique Morones, the founder of Border Angels, spoke of his support for PSF. Morones admitted to the San Diego Tribune in 2014 that “[t]hese people do not qualify for visas.”
Border Angels claims it is supported by American businesses such as Ralph’s supermarket chain, the Hermandad Mexicana immigration service, and the state of Sinaloa, one of Mexico’s 32 federal districts
The New Haven Independent also detailed some of the U.S.-based work undertaken by the aforementioned groups, revealing the that:
The Casa de los Amigos, and in the vast expanse of rural and indigenous Mexico, Aprofam congregates ‘communities of origin’ — towns that send a large number of migrants to the U.S. — to navigate the separation of families, the influx of remittances, and a broken immigration system.
The paper trail doesn’t just stop with many of these government, corporate, and Quaker-backed organizations.
In April, The Blaze network reported the link between PSF and a U.S. resident called Alex Mensing, apparently working on behalf of the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project.
CARA is comprised of two other legal groups: the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. and the American Immigration Council, both of which count George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) amongst their donors, through OSF, hav e claimed they have nothing directly to do with the latest migrant caravan.
It is worth noting in closing how groups like AFSC, PSF, and dozens of others have long been members of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) based out of Los Angeles, California.
NDLON staff such as Marisa Franco were invitees to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization’s “Defying Trump” conference call on November 15, 2016.
The group — founded in 1985 — is outwardly Marxist-Leninist in its worldview, and counts amongst its allies other ultra-leftist organizations as part of the wider United for Peace and Justice national group.
Far from the grassroots, scarcely organized or funded caravan that many news organizations are suggesting the latest incursion represents, the network of individuals, organizations, and both public and private support for these open borders organizations is robust and widespread.
As the world found out after Europe’s migrant crisis peak in 2015, those looking to import or traffic human being across multiple borders often have vast ideological and financial interests at stake. President Trump would do well to recognize this fact and convey it to the American public.
Raheem Kassam is the former senior advisor to Brexit leader Nigel Farage and author of the bestselling book ’No Go Zones: How Shariah Law is Coming to a Neighbourhood Near You’. He tweets at @RaheemKassam
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.