A convoy of protesters calling itself "God's Army" is making its way to the U.S. southern border, with organizers having an ambitious goal of attracting 700,000 people or more to expose the Biden administration's lax immigration policies.
"To the naysayers: We're just ordinary citizens, farmers, ranchers, retired police officers. Not crazy conspiracy theorists," Kim Yeater, an organizer for Take Our Border Back, told the New York Post. "It will be a peaceful assembly of Americans of all political classes and all ethnicities."
Yeater's group left Virginia and Monday and stopped overnight in Florida, hoping to rally more people. The Post reported vans and trucks had joined the growing convoy in Jacksonville, Florida, on Tuesday morning as it prepared to head through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and into Quemado, Texas, about 20 miles north of the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, where a rally will be held Saturday.
"We've got Canadian truckers, moms and dads," Yeater told the Post. "We've got motorcycles. If people could bring horses, they'd bring horses. I know the numbers we are looking at are 700,000. I think it'll possibly be bigger than that."
The convoy reportedly is expected to branch off Thursday in Texas and continue to the border town of Yuma, Arizona, which, like Eagle Pass, has been overwhelmed by the flood of illegal immigrants, for a rally Saturday. Also, a rally in San Ysidro, California, will take place Saturday morning, according to Take Our Border Back's website, and then join the Arizona rally, culminating in rallies across those three states.
Yeater told the Post the group is not against immigrants coming to the U.S., but the situation has gotten out of control.
"We're all about safe, legal immigrations," she said, "by vetting the people coming in. I have moms [who will speak at the rallies Saturday] speaking of children who died from fentanyl. I have one [Agnes Gibboney] whose child was killed by an illegal immigrant who had crossed that border multiple times. She just left the cemetery [Monday] on what would have been his birthday."
Gibboney's 29-year-old son Ronald da Silva was killed in April 2002 in California by Luis Humberto Gonzales, 44, who then fled to Mexico. Gonzales, who was deported in 1999 following convictions on separate burglary charges, according to the Daily Bulletin of Inland Valley, California, was apprehended when he returned to the U.S. and was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was deported again in 2019.
"This is not a right or left issue. It's not," Yeater told the Post. "We're the little guys. We're just standing up and saying, you've got to protect our home. We put you in charge, and now we're holding them accountable."