In late March, hundreds of attendees assembled at San Antonio’s down town convention center for the 15th annual Border Security Expo, a three-day gathering of the government agents who police immigration and the private-sector vendors who love to sell them expensive things.
On the first day, the crowd, dressed business casual, packed into the main conference room. By video, a 29-year-old goateed billionaire named Palmer Luckey, who’d switched his passion from virtual reality gaming to selling weapons and surveillance equipment to the feds through a company named after a sword from , roused the crowd: “Border Patrol can and should demand more from the vendors here today.” Then, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz introduced a brief video montage. There was scary music, a tunnel, a long line of brown-skinned asylum-seekers, and a deep-voiced narrator telling us the situation required “constant vigilance.” Agents whipped around on four-wheelers
