In years of doing this work, Foley said he’s never been shot at. He said people usually just surrender and drop their cargo or run back toward Mexico.

Foley said he started doing this work after the 2008 financial crisis. He’d been making a decent living as a construction-crew supervisor, but left when work dried up and his salary collapsed.

He sold his home, his possessions, and now lives in ramshackle digs near the border, collecting donations, doing work he says the U.S. government should be doing.

He is deeply, bitterly anti-government. His scorn extends to the Border Patrol, which he insists, despite its members’ claims, has all the resources it needs.

He longs to see its union disbanded and its employees forced out of their vehicles and offices, required to camp in one-week shifts along these trails, doing what he does.

Oh – he was in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

In his view, that attack on the U.S. Capitol was less damaging than left-wing protests, and potentially just a preview of what’s coming here, in a country of heavily armed, angry citizens, millions of whom have combat experience.