Between White Nationalism and Sheriff Chuck Jenkins
How Frederick, MD elected an alt-right sheriff.
In 2008, Frederick, Maryland’s sheriff Chuck Jenkins implemented a far-right-wing immigration agenda that deputizes local police as ICE agents. The 287 (g) has criminalized whole communities in dozens of different counties.
Even having cases go all the way up to the supreme court. In the case Santos v. Frederick County Board of Commissioners et al a judge found that Chuck Jenkins and his deputies violated the civil rights of Roxanna Orellana Santos when she was arrested while eating her lunch outside the Common Market.
Sheriff Jenkins claims that there is nothing inherently racist about the 287 (g) program. In reality, the Latin@ community has felt under attack for a generation in Frederick county. Besides the sheriff—the most vocal supporters include organizations like Help Save Maryland—which are considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Some of his supporters openly identify as the alt-right, such as Dennis Michael Lynch, who spoke at Frederick Community College in 2012. Another supporter, Jeff Werner of Help Save Maryland, promotes neo-nazi conspiracy theories on their personal blog and calls Jenkins a “hero.”
Help Save Maryland
In 2010, in partnership with Help Save MD, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins traveled throughout Maryland to promote the 287 (g) agreement. One event was organized by Jeff Werner in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Help Save Maryland is a far-right group connected to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, and leadership has an open dialogue with VDARE.com. HSM’s own social media accounts often spread misinformation about undocumented immigrants, campaigns against migrants coming to Maryland, and tweet often about MS-13.
Current Help Save Maryland Social Media director, Jeff Werner, currently lives in West Virginia. Jeff Werner's personal blog has spread conspiracies about white genocide, promoted Islamophobic ideas, linked to neo-nazi websites like National Policy Institute, and Vdare.
VDARE.com is a known white nationalist website and whose own editor-and-chief has spoken at Richard Spencer’s of National Policy Institute. Richard Spencer is, of course, famous for saying “Hail Trump” while giving Hitler Salutes. At least one member of HSM’s leadership used to regularly contribute to the website.
They Came To America
In August of 2012, Blaine Young and Sheriff Chuck Jenkins brought Dennis Micahel Lynch to Frederick Community College. Dennis produced the documentary “They Came To America.”
Fast forward four years, Dennis would be openly identifying with the “Alt-Right.” While he later would delete pro-alt-right blog posts, his own documentary showed people using racial slurs to describe latin@ people.
Federation For American Immigration Reform
In 2014, Sheriff Chuck Jenkins visited the border for a trip funded by FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). Without doing further research than looking at organizations’ sites and putting in talking points, the Frederick News-Post broke the story.
From the article “The White Nationalists No One Protested:”
FAIR was founded in 1979, by John Tanton, would also found NumbersUSA, and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), the “big three” of anti-immigrant groups, that would go on to mastermind everything from SB-1070 to the VoterID campaign which kicked millions of voters, largely of color, off the voting rolls. The group’s stated goal was to keep America as much a white nation as possible and preserve white supremacy within the United States by keeping non-white immigration down. Tanton stated:
“I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” — John Tanton, letter to eugenicist and ecology professor Garrett Hardin (now deceased), Dec. 10, 1993
Beyond the big three anti-immigrant organizations, FAIR produced White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller who advanced the Family Separation Zero-Tolerance Border Policy, Muslim Ban, and is admired by Richard Spencer.
Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association
But other connections may be more important to Jenkins’ status as an alt-right sheriff than Jenkins’ membership to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an organization which is co-founded by Richard Mack, a founding member of the OathKeepers.
The oath keepers founder and current board member of CSAPOA once stated: “that there is nothing that the UN or the New World Order boys or the feds want to shove down our otherwise healthy throats that we cannot stop at the county level with a constitutionally educated sheriff.” Spreading New World Order conspiracies is a part of the alt-right.
Some of the largest figures of the anti-Semitic New World Order conspiracies include Alex Jones of Infowars, Paul Joeseph-Watson of Prison Planet, and many other political extremists.
In addition, Richard Mack also tried to organize sheriffs to openly defy and refuse to implement the supreme court ruling on gay marriage.
While Chuck Jenkins may not be aware that he’s palling around with racists, he’s associated with some of the most racist political figures and organizations in the nation.
It should be alarming to Frederick residents that the top cop in the county might be one or two steps away from the people who organized Unite The Right. Chuck Jenkins is part of the political milieu that’s led to numerous politically-motivated shootings and terror attacks.
Although Chuck Jenkins may be an extreme example, he’s not far from mainstream among police. The fact that he’s so motivated to keep Latin@ families out of Frederick County should alarm residents who care about those families.
The only thing 1,300 plus people who’ve been deported because of 287 (g) have done to receive this attention do not have documentation.
Special thanks to Johnny Ringo for writing about sheriff Chuck Jenkins in the past. Their research was used in writing this article.
