Wendy Fry, San Diego Union-Tribune, April 29, 2019

When federal law enforcement officials last year began collecting dossiers on mostly American journalists, activists and lawyers in Tijuana involved with the migrant caravan, one part of their investigation focused on an alleged plot by a drug cartel to sell guns to protesters, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report.

A Dec. 18, 2018, document from the FBI, obtained by the Union-Tribune, specifies an alleged plan for activists to purchase guns from a “Mexico-based cartel associate known as Cobra Commander,” or Ivan Riebeling.

The protesters wanted to “stage an armed rebellion at the border,” the FBI reported to dozens of federal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Mexico.

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The document warns of “anti-fascist activists” that “planned to disrupt U.S. law enforcement and military security operations at the US/Mexican border.”

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“This is an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence,” the six-page report states. “Receiving agencies are requested not to take action based on this raw reporting without prior coordination with the FBI.”

The FBI sent its report with “priority” to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Administration, among other agencies.

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A few names included in the FBI report overlap with names included in a secret database of people being monitored by Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations, originally reported by NBC San Diego and Telemundo 20.

However, the database includes many others not included in the FBI’s report, and it remains unclear why those people — mostly American journalists, activists and attorneys — were targeted and monitored.

In March, it was discovered that Customs and Border Protection had compiled lists of people it wanted to stop for questioning at the border. {snip}

CBP said the names on the list are people who were present when violence broke out at the Tijuana border in November and January, when agents deployed tear gas. The agency said people were being questioned so that the agency could learn more about what started the altercations.

Some of the people detained and questioned said they were asked whether anyone was encouraging migrants to rush the border during the two incidents. Several people confirmed they were told they were being questioned as part of a “national security investigation.”

The FBI’s report says a group of activists in Tijuana supporting the migrant caravan “were encouraged to bring personally owned weapons to the border and the group also intended to purchase weapons from a Mexico-based cartel associate known as Cobra Commander, AKA the Mexican Rambo, and smuggle the weapons into the United States.”

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