Iowa Plans Terror Drill With Immigrant-Hating Gunmen

Anti-illegal immigration groups are furious over an anti-terrorism exercise planned in Iowa that will pit Pottawattamie County's finest against a pair of teenage white supremacists. The drill, which is scheduled for tomorrow, is built around a fictional scenario in which an 18-year-old, angered by the influx of minorities—both citizens and illegal immigrants—in the community, convinces a friend to join him in a school shooting spree, the Des Moines Register reports. In the story, the youth’s father is a gun-loving member of a white supremacist group.

Minuteman groups say they're bombarding elected officials with complaints, because they think the exercise, which will involve more than 300 people, portrays gun-owning immigration foes in a negative light. “We are trying to get this stopped because all it is doing is building up prejudices by calling people white supremacists and stuff like that,” says the director of the Minuteman Patriots. The event’s planners say they’re trying to prepare for a school shooting, but to get federal funding, they needed to craft a “terrorist incident,” and the white supremacist angle fits the bill. “This is purely the backdrop of the setup,” says the county’s emergency exercise organizer, “to help create a perception of reality for the responders.” (More white supremacist stories.)