The death of Oin Oakstar at the age of 43 was probably not a surprise
to anyone familiar with the Arizona man’s drug-and-alcohol-fueled
lifestyle.
What surprises many, however, is where he died: In a homeless
encampment under a freeway overpass in Everett, Wash., more than a
thousand miles from Arivaca, his longtime home near the border.
Police found Oakstar’s body on Wednesday in a tent near an area
frequented by homeless people, on railroad property near Interstate 5.
There were no obvious signs of how he died, though natural causes are
suspected, and police say they are awaiting word on an autopsy, the Everett Herald reported.
Oakstar lived for many years in Arivaca, where he worked for a number
of drug-smuggling operations and avidly partook in the products he
sold, as he later testified in Pima County Superior Court. It was also
in Arivaca that, in 2009, Oakstar met Shawna Forde, a self-proclaimed
leader of a “Minuteman” border-watch operation in the Sonoran desert— Forde, as it happens, grew up and lived in Everett at the time she became involved in the Minuteman movement.
Forde, a 41-year-old former hairdresser and teen prostitute, who led a
group of her “Minutemen”—aided by one of Oakstar’s employers, an
Arivaca man named Albert Gaxiola—to the home of another local smuggler, a
man named Raul “Junior” Flores, in the early-morning hours of May 30,
2009. There, Forde ordered her gunman, a Washington white supremacist
named Jason Eugene Bush, to shoot Flores, his wife, Gina Gonzalez, and
his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia. Gonzalez survived, and, in a dramatic
scene, eventually drove the invaders from her home with gunfire.
Oakstar was arrested the next day by Pima County Sheriff’s Office
detectives on suspicion of involvement in the murders. Based in part on
information that Oakstar gave them, detectives were able to arrest
Forde, Bush, and Gaxiola within two weeks of the killings. Oakstar’s
testimony in 2011, describing the events leading up to the killings,
also helped put all three of those suspects away.
Forde and Bush are now on Arizona’s Death Row, and Gaxiola is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.
As Oakstar described it, Forde wanted to raid a “drug house” in the
smuggling corridor where Arivaca sits and steal the smugglers’ drugs and
money, all part of her plan to buy a borderland ranch and convert it
into a training compound for her outfit, the Minuteman American Defense.
Gaxiola obligingly provided her with the name of Flores—a local
rival—and told her that there were several million dollars in the house.
(The home invaders came away with nothing but handfuls of Gonzalez’
jewelry.)
Oakstar, who had a long criminal history related to drug dealing,
testified that he had driven Forde and her gang past the Flores’ home
earlier in the day. But when they came by to pick him up at his home for
the robbery, they found him incapacitated by alcohol. Oakstar said it
was a way out, since he thought he smelled a setup in Forde’s invasion
plan, and he wanted nothing to do with hitting a rival where his family
lived.
“Women and children are not part of it,” he testified. “There’s no reason to bring them into it.”
According to the Herald,
Oakstar had been in the Pacific Northwest since at least this spring.
He had been arrested in April 2014 by Seattle police for investigation
for burglary and listed his address then as a Seattle homeless shelter.
Border militiaman K.C. Massey III was slightly apologetic about
detaining three border-crossing immigrants during one of his outfit’s
vigilante patrols awhile back—handcuffing the men behind their backs
with zip ties—along the Rio Grande in southern Texas.
“Sorry we had to ‘Detain’ them,” Massey, one of the leaders of the
militiamen that began gathering several weeks ago in Texas, wrote in a
Facebook comment after video of the detentions was posted online. “[B]ut they were wore out and just fell down and gave up while the other 7-8 ran like gazelles!”
As the post explained, the militiamen detained the people—described
as Honduran, Guatemalan, and Mexican—after they encountered a group of
about 11 border crossers, most of whom took off through the brush. The
three men they kept were “ziptied, debriefed, and given water,” and U.S.
Border Patrol officers eventually arrived and took them away.
“WE DO NOT AIM TO DETAIN, we would much rather send them back into
the river into Mexico and dissuade them and the cartel from crossing on
the property we patrol,” the post explained. “All encounters were
conducted in a humanitarian, professional fashion. Stay vigilant. Thank
you for your support.”
But behind the guise of humanitarian treatment was a not-so-subtle
smirking contempt. “One of the guys pissed himself!” remarked Massey.
Another chimed in, “Dude pissed himself bad.”
A couple of Camp LoneStar's finest. Credit: Facebook.
Welcome to Camp LoneStar,
a border militia outpost on the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas where
antigovernment “Patriots,” heavily armed and hunting for immigrants,
have seemingly taken the law into their own hands in recent weeks and
made residents near their operation increasingly fearful and resentful.
The camp, a makeshift encampment, lies on the 21-acre property of a
longtime Brownsville-area rancher named Cuban “Rusty” Monsees. Most of
the participants pitch tents or park their vehicles there, then go out
on patrols at nighttime or afoot in groups, always loaded with a variety
of weapon. During the day, they use all-terrain vehicles to prowl along
the border fence line or drive to overlooks along the Rio Grande, where
they can catch people swimming across the river.
Indeed–just as the detention video post described–another video,
posted by Massey on his Facebook page, showed the militiamen forcing
border crossers who swam to the American side of the river to retrieve
their belongings and swim back to the Mexico side. The video has no
audio, but similar previous video from Camp LoneStar included the verbal harassment the border watchers were shouting at the swimmers.
Since it began, there has been a rotating cast of characters at the
encampment. Initially, the self-described “commanding officer” at Camp
LoneStar was an Arizona militiaman named Joe O’Shaugnessy, but he was eventually replaced by the more strident K.C. Massey.
The portrait of Camp LoneStar that has emerged in recent weeks is not
pretty, depicting a camp awash in paranoia and testosterone, with feuds
among participants and conspiracy theories flitting about like moths.
Massey and his fellow border watchers––including Monsees—are
particularly paranoid about the Mexican drug cartels they claim are
responsible for most of the human trafficking they observe—a claim that
remains unsubstantiated. They insist on maintaining their anonymity out
of fear of retaliation from the cartels; Massey told the Observer
reporters that even disclosing how many men were there could endanger
them.
“We don’t want cartel operatives knowing about our operation,” he
explained. “Let’s just say if there were 10 of us, then the cartel would
send 20 hit men to take us out.”
Indeed, one of the former participants at the camp—a “Patriot” named
Rob Chupp, an Indiana man who was a participant in one of Santilli’s
multiple interviews in weeks ago—said that he and others decided to
leave the camp when it became clear that the overseers were not
particular about whether or not felons could participate in the camp,
nor whether illegal weapons might be in use there. It was a Camp
LoneStar participant, John Frederick Forrester, who drew gunfire from a Border Patrol officer in pursuit of a fugitive recently. Forrester, in fact, is a convicted felon.
Chupp, who was involved in organizing an ill-fated “Patriot”
border-crossing, said he and a number of other border watchers pulled
out because of concerns about the legality of the operation.
“After the whole shooting thing, we figured out that some of them
were felons,” Chupp told Hatewatch, “We asked several of the guys to
leave that we found out were felons. Because yeah, we have a Second
Amendment to protect your right to bear arms, but we are also a nation
of laws, and there’s a reason we don’t let felons own guns. … And it
came to be a problem, and it was loud, and ‘We don’t care what the gun
laws are,’ and ‘If we want to have this weapon even if it’s illegal,
we’re gonna have it.’ It just turned south, and we pulled out.”
Their neighbors are concerned too. Maria Cordero, an ACLU attorney
whose home is just down the road from Monsees’ property, told The
Observer that everyone in the neighborhood is fearful about the men in
camouflage patrolling near their homes. “We don’t know who they are,”
Cordero said. “Do they have criminal records? People are afraid, but
more than that they are confused.”
Cordero’s husband described a neighborhood full of fearful families,
unable to distinguish between the cartels, the militiamen, and real law
enforcement.
“We don’t know who these people are. They’re carrying high-powered
weapons. It makes us feel less safe, not more safe to have them here,”
he said. “I just hope they leave soon.”
