Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Border Rally

Almost didn’t go, woke up late, didn’t roll out until after nine. Third time droning two hours across South Texas to the Rio Grande in a month.



Seems like everyone is expecting Eagle Pass (pop 28,000) to be this big dramatic thing. Business as usual there today. Here’s the main drag, 1.7 miles from the Border. In order of appearance: Popeyes, Burger King, Dairy Queen, Mc Donald’s, HEB, EZ Pawn, Dollar General. All staffed on prior visits by typically small town South Texas friendly people, speaking fluent English. Hispanic Americans.

If the mass illegal immigrant convoys are showing up across the river there that’s all on the Mexican Cartels, not Eagle Pass.



The old downtown above Shelby Park and the river, quiet. Eagle Pass Cops blocked access a block away (in background), likely because of all the publicity about the rally.



Hang a right in the above image towards Quemado and maybe 200 yards later you’ll pass through Eagle Pass’s version of the suburbs. No burglar bars, no graffiti.

The end of that street looking left, the Border fence and Mexico in the background, said fence running behind the houses in the above pic.



From that spot, also just inside the fence, apartment living, again no burglar bars, no graffiti. Night and day different from El Cenizo I stopped in at last time outside of Laredo.



Heading out of town 20 miles upriver to Quemado. In this context Quemado felt so separate from Eagle Pass and the Shelby Park flashpoint that the rally coulda been 200 miles away. Point of interest, this is a familiar highway for my Eagle Pass friends, this is the way the two rival high school football teams travel between Eagle Pass and Del Rio…



Be aware that there’s no gas station along the highway at Quemado (pop. 71). No signage along the highway for the Cornerstone Children’s Camp or the rally. If not for Google Maps I woulda had a hard time. I followed a Maverick County Sheriff’s Dept Pickup in.

Maybe they've changed their invasion routes to give the -Take back our borders- truckers an Eagles Pass rotten egg.

A good-sized crowd given the location but not in the thousands, about a hundred yard walk in past the parked vehicles lining both sides of the highway, prob’ly the same in the other direction…



Flags were a thing, and they were done well.

See many out of State plates Mike?

or cool birds?

either the winged kind or the purty two legged one?

Maybe, I do note that the illegal immigrant convoys ain’t going through Nuevo Laredo/Laredo, which is the major ingress point for drugs. Maybe they don’t want attention there, maybe Piedras Negras/Eagle Pass is the only Mexican Border City other than Nuevo Laredo with the infrastructure to move thousands through in a short period of time.

Ya there were some pretty women in the crowd, all accompanied by men. Demographically as you’d expect it was mostly an older, White crowd with a liberal sprinkling of Hispanics. What it was was a friendly crowd, we were all on the same page.

Along with the dire predictions of myself and others here, I was expecting a massive police presence, so much so I almost went unarmed. There were DPS Cops and Maverick County Sheriffs but only one, a Sheriffs Deputy, was on foot out of a vehicle, she was standingqq at at the gate. One thing different was a tethered drone high overhead, being operated by a guy standing next to a van dressed in black wearing a handgun on an adjacent property. Of course this was a cop-friendly crowd. The big police presence I saw was at Shelby Park back in Eagle Pass.

‘Nother thing I almost left at home were my two small dogs. Actually, had it not rained heavily through the night that morning we woulda done our usual Saturday morning two-hour hike and I wouldn’t have driven to the rally. They can tell it’s the weekend by my morning routine and of course they were expecting to come along. I had no idea what the situation would be at the rally but I thought WTF I’ll bring em anyway. I needn’t have worried.

At the rally I saw no black rifles nor longarms of any sort, nor was anyone openly carrying, tho I expect lots of folks there, including myself would have triggered a metal detector 🙂 What was in evidence everywhere were dogs. For not being a dog-centered event this was the he most dog-friendly event I can recall, maybe one in five people brung a dog or two 🙂



Tho it was laying right out there in the way, nothing was said, by common consent ever’body let this sleeping dog lie.



Out of state plates? Yes, tho I didn’t keep a tally, the couple parked next to me were down from Minnesota and our conversation was about dogs, mine and theirs.

The only bird picks I got were these full-time panhandlers at the truck stop coming in to Eagle Pass, just to show that even the grackles are bigger in Texas.

Great-tailed grackles, those are two males threatening each other, bills pointed upwards in a threat display. The smaller one is an adult female

One thing apparent right away was the amount of time, money and preparation sunk into planning this thing. Stage, sound system, musicians, portajons, security lights. Seems like Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin shoulda been down there rather than up in Austin.



Bloggers or Independent Journalists whatever (I suppose that would include me), including two different Asian couples, were evident, interviewing people willing to talk on video and to them.



The Black guy in this photo might have been a more mainstream news type. He spoke with a French accent (Haiti?) and was hurrying around with two Newcaster-looking women following him looking for a good backdrop to film.



What there wasn’t in the visuals however was any sense of being close to the river, tho looking at the map we coulda been just 100 yards away. Flat terrain, thick brush, and a quiet, slow moving river. Being right on the river coulda lent powerful visual effect but I guess no guarantees there couldn’t be gunfire from the Mexican side.

Unlikely, given that the Cartels dislike drawing attention to themselves, but not impossible.

😎👍

Cool pictures and thank you for the tour.............Love the signs & flags too. They all speak the truth.

You’re welcome gentlemen, it was different from what I was expecting.

A lot of vendors at the rally, and it didn’t seem this was their first go-round. I didn’t know this category of vendors existed. I don’t believe they broke even either, I didn’t see folks lining up to buy and the crowd was in the hundreds, not thousands.

I didn’t buy anything but I did spot these people $5 in support (I didn’t have much cash in hand). Turns out some kids at Quemado participate in a Youth Volleyball League, and some quick-thinking sponsors had jumped at the unexpected opportunity 🙂 As I was leaving I saw a local taco truck arriving, word musta gotten out



The funniest vendor was this guy - a proud member of LGBFJB Community

Liberty-Guns-Bible-FJB

That's where we are, even a 'rally' against an invasion looks like and is treated like a swap meet. Cheezy tshirts, cup cakes and flags for sale.

Sad

There were only three Antifa-looking types hanging around the front gate, late twenty maybe early thirties, two guys and a woman. One guy was in a Batman outfit, rubber hood and cape. For the most part people ignored them. I spoke to Batman, he said he was there promoting a mental health app. I don’t believe he was telling the truth.

The other guy tried to pet my little yellow dog, who is ordinarily tolerant of such things, this time she growled at him. Those three people seemed to be burdened with the malicious unhappiness common to the Left.



That guy was so far out there even the MSM would have no use for him, what was a problem tho was this toxic preacher out front. Understand this whole rally was put on by an organization called “The Army of God”. What was going on on stage on the Camp grounds was a lot of prayer, mostly a church service, so it weren’t an un-Christian event by any means.

Out front this guy was loud, non-stop and constantly trying to PO people, engage them in arguments. You can agree with all his signs (“All Real Muslims are Jihadis” was another one) but the issue here was Border Security not homosexuality or BLM. These are the sort of people the MSM photographs and films to put their spin on the whole event.

I was talking to some attendees and we were wondering if these were the Westboro Baptist crowd.




Meanwhile, high overhead, that tethered law-enforcement drone watching everything. When I see this new hi-tech surveillance stuff, I feel it’s like we’re looking at the state of aviation a hundred years ago, 1924….



I agree with this guy….

I get your point but I’m gonna beg to differ.

We have similar gatherings about breast cancer, bicycles, dogs, “women’s health” (OK, Abortion), bird watching, fishing, boating, camping, coyote and rattlesnake-killing tournaments and swap meets centering upon bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks and firearms. I’m sure I’m missing some.

Attending this thing was actually a good time AND it got a message out. Especially encouraging was the presence of the local youth volleyball team and then the taco truck showing up. Clearly THOSE Border residents were not afraid nor in opposition.

I’m typical of most in that I had no idea of what I was driving into. If more people knew the actual nature of it and how safe the Border almost always is on our side of the river attendance coulda been much higher.

I’m hoping Quemado gets to be an annual event. Next time I’d spend the weekend, good company to be found there.

Cool. Thanks for taking us along.

Did ya see Ram's rig?

Almost forgot, I only stayed maybe ninety minutes, I had a late start and things needing doing at home, but here’s a final image of a class act, taken through the pickup window as I was leaving.

A firearms instructor/Military veteran-looking guy picking up any trash left out, making sure we left the place cleaner than when we found it 😎