Roger Barnett, an Arizona resident who has contributed financially to Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, has been ordered to pay $98,000 after a jury found him responsible for the assault and false imprisonment of a group of Mexican-American hunters.From the AP report:
The Cochise County jury in Bisbee on Wednesday found Douglas rancher Roger Barnett the only partly responsible for the incident, assessing damages at $210,000, but ordering him to pay $98,000 after laying part of the blame on two men in the hunting party.
As reported by Colorado Confidential in August, Barnett have given a total of $2,000 to Tancredo, the controversial Congressman who said this week that the city of Miami was a “third world country.”
More on the specifics:
Barnett is an anti-illegal immigrant activist who claims to have detained more than 10,000 migrants in the last 10 years. He denied threatening the hunting party, testifying that he took out his AR-15 rifle only because the adults in the group were carrying rifles.
The Morales party, American citizens of Mexican descent, said Barnett insulted them with racial slurs and threatened to shoot them. Barnett denied the allegations.
According to the article, the suit was sponsored by the Border Action Network and the Southern Poverty Law Center, two civil rights groups.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) also has a pending lawsuit against Barnett for another incident where he is accused of assaulting and detaining a group of migrants.
