YouTube Livestreamers Made Money ‘Hunting’ for Migrants Along the US Border

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David Gilberto

Far-right extremists have spent the past week harassing and threatening migrants on the United States border with Mexico while making money by livestreaming it on YouTube and Rumble.

“Somebody’s there,” Dennis Yarbery, one of the YouTubers, said as he approached a migrant camp in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, near the border, last week afternoon. Yarbery was broadcasting live in front of thousands of people. , come out, wherever you are. “

Yarbery is one of three men who broke away from the Take Our Border Back convoy in Texas and, according to their live streams, spent days driving along the border in Arizona and California to harass migrants and nonprofit volunteers.

“We’re poachers,” Yarbery told a clerk on a livestream at a Subway sandwich counter in Jacumba Hot Springs. “I’ve hunted a lot in my life, but I’ve never hunted people, and that’s what we’re doing now. “

Yarbery, who is known online as both MasterGrifter and Big D and says he joined the People’s Convoy, a group that protested Covid lockdown measures and disrupted traffic, in 2022, was joined by Josh Fulfer, known as OreoExpress, and Joe Felix, known as Taco Joe, who runs 1st Responders Media, an outlet focused on livestreaming far-right events.

Throughout the hours of broadcasting from the Arizona-California border, those live streamers asked for donations from their supporters, which they claimed were being used to continue their paintings “covering” the crisis.

Even while in the middle of harassing the migrants, the livestreamers could still be heard thanking those who were sending them money via YouTube’s Super Chat function or through other platforms like Venmo and the Christian-aligned crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. In one situation, while Fulfer was shouting at migrants in Arizona telling them to go home, he stopped briefly to call out a supporter who had sent him $50 on Venmo.

The livestreams come after weeks of fierce rhetoric from the far-right network and Republican lawmakers over immigration at the Texas border with Mexico. This year, the scenario blew up: after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott refused to heed the Biden administration’s calls to remove barbed cords. Along the border, a dozen Republican governors publicly declared their support for Abbott, and the Take Our Border Back convoy traveled from Virginia to Texas. Even as the convoy lost steam, the violent anti-immigration rhetoric, which experts warn, would have lasted a long time. long-term consequences have only intensified.

“The post-convoy terrorist crusade against immigrants at the border follows an all-too-familiar trend that has been followed for the past two decades,” said Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Human Rights Research and Education. To speak of “chasing people” is to descend to a new point detrimental to armed vigilantes. If nothing is done, the armed right-wing vigilantes will spill even more blood. “

After the livestreamers left Texas, they traveled to Sasabe in Arizona and to a migrant camp run by No More Deaths, a humanitarian organization that supports migrants crossing the border.

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During an hour-long live broadcast well into the night, Yarbery, Fulfer and Felix yelled at the immigrants and accused them of human trafficking. Yarbery even tried to sell cigarettes to immigrants for $20 each. At one point, Fulfer threatened violence against a migrant who was shining a flashlight on his cameras.

The trio also verbally attacked a volunteer working for the organization, following her as she called the U. S. Border Patrol. The U. S. Navy, according to live streams of the incident noted via WIRED before it was taken offline.

Yarbery, Felix, and Fulfer didn’t respond to WIRED’s requests for comment about their actions at the border.

Laurie Cantillo, a board member from Humane Borders, says the organization, which maintains water stations along migrant routes near the border, is aware of the allegations of harassment. “We have noticed an increase in vandalism of our permitted water stations along the border,” Cantillo tells WIRED. “Our 55-gallon barrels have been shot, stabbed, drained, and stolen. It’s a sad state of affairs when someone sabotages water that can save a human life.”

The U. S. Border Patrol The U. S. Department of Homeland Security and No More Deaths did not respond to requests for comment on the incident. A former No More Deaths volunteer, who did not need to be known for security reasons, told WIRED that he was not surprised that no one responded, as the organization “might not need to draw further attention to this event. “

After departing Arizona, the trio of livestreamers headed to California, where they continued to try and track down migrant camps. On several days their searches were fruitless, though they continued to broadcast and solicit donations through YouTube.

After Fulfer and Felix left, Yarbery continued to “hunt,” as he called it, and on a weekend show, he livestreamed with his wife and baby as he made his way to the border at Jacumba Hot Springs.

There, Yarbery met with locals to talk about the plight of migrants, and in one conversation, a man on the livestream can be heard saying, “I’m saying we’re going to shoot them all,” before Yarbery told him to shut down while livestreamed on Youtube.

YouTube did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment on the live streams, however, 24 hours after WIRED flagged the channels on the video platform, the streamers’ accounts were deleted.

However, within hours, Yarbery created a backup channel and let his fans know where they could follow him on YouTube.

For years, extremism experts have studied how violent rhetoric around the border and migrants has led directly to violence, dating back to the 2000s, when alarmist attacks on immigrants led to the mobilization of far-right paramilitary groups, one of which brutally murdered. Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter Brisenia.

“Unfortunately, this cycle of violence is so common that it tends to go unnoticed outside of communities targeted by far-right vigilantes,” Burghart said. “This time, the Black Mirror-like difference is that the technology advances now allow [people like Yarbery, Fulfer, and Felix] to spread and monetize their cruelty toward a far-right fan base that craves more. “

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