Editor’s Note: This report is part of “Seeds of Distrust,” an investigative collaboration between Lighthouse Reports, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, the Texas Observer, palabra, and Puente News Collaborative.
Jaeson Jones is trained as a cop—not a journalist. Yet the 51-year-old holds a lucrative correspondent contract at one of the country’s most prominent MAGA-aligned television networks. Jones began his police career as a jailer in Hays County, south of Austin, before becoming a narcotics agent and later a captain in the intelligence and counterterrorism unit in the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). After a nearly 30-year career, he retired in 2016. Then, alongside an increasing number of former police and federal agents, Jones sought stardom as a right-wing influencer while cultivating ties with Donald Trump.
Jones’ efforts began in 2017 with a YouTube channel, where he pitched himself as a “nationally recognized authority on border security and transnational crimes.” His one-man show, Tripwires and Triggers, lacked sophisticated production. Early videos featured primitive graphics, poor lighting, and awkward jump cuts. Many received fewer than 500 views.
Then, in 2019, Jones landed a gig with Breitbart, a Trump-aligned media outlet that hired him to write about border security. Around that time, he met Lara Logan, an Emmy Award winner and former CBS correspondent who has become a darling of the MAGA-sphere. She interviewed Jones for her show, Lara Logan Has No Agenda, before being let go from Fox News after comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to a sadistic Nazi doctor.
Soon, the former lawman, despite his rudimentary Spanish, was being regularly featured as an expert on Mexican drug cartels on primetime Fox News programs, including Tucker Carlson’s show. In 2021, he became a correspondent for Newsmax, a once-fringe Fox rival that grew into a MAGA media powerhouse following the 2020 election. In June, a Reuters Institute study found that 8 percent of Americans—about 25 million—consulted Newsmax at least weekly. (That’s about the same number who report reading the Wall Street Journal weekly. Its online-only reach is similar to NPR’s, the same study showed.)
As a Newsmax correspondent, Jones hasn’t always nailed the details in his reporting, often misspelling words and names. In one broadcast, his graphics misidentified Bubba Shelton—the sheriff of McMullen County—as the sheriff of “McAllen County” (McAllen is a Texas border city, not a county). In the title of a recent YouTube video, Jones misspelled Lukeville, Arizona—an unincorporated community on the international border and one of the state’s only ports of entry—as “Luthville.”
But, in MAGA-aligned media, it seems to be consistent political messaging that matters—not specifics. As a former DPS officer, Jones enjoys favorable treatment from the state police agency, including access to helicopters and police intelligence of which other journalists could only dream. He often features DPS helicopters, aircraft hangars, or personnel in movie trailer-style videos. In one video on his YouTube channel, Jones totes a large bundle of seized drugs on his shoulder, transporting the illicit goods from a DPS helicopter to a U.S. Border Patrol pickup. In another, Jones runs behind a state police officer, up and down boulders and through thick brush and creosote bushes—as if he, too, is part of the law enforcement team.
“We can just grab ’em, pick ’em up and remove ’em out of this country.”
During many of his dispatches, Jones wears the same brown-and-black checkered scarf as DPS airmen, from whom he regularly receives intel: The division’s head pilot, Stacy Holland, texts Jones on a regular basis, according to records obtained by the Texas Observer. (In 2012, then-captain Holland was maneuvering an agency helicopter when a trooper shot at a speeding pickup, killing two Guatemalan migrants and injuring another, according to police video obtained for a previous Observer investigation.)
Most DPS officers decline interviews, instead directing journalists to the agency’s media office, which often ignores press inquiries. Holland, on the other hand, has a close relationship with Jones, often sending him photos and videos. The exchanges show that Jones has obtained access to a stream of intelligence, including suspicious activity reports, screenshots of a helicopter’s aerial view cameras, and photos of tracking devices from a DPS computer.
Jones calls Holland “bro” and praises him for his contributions, some of which are not public information. “I like it!” Jones replied to one photo. “Anything new from the field coming in lately? We should ramp that up again.” In text conversations, the two refer to migrants as “bodies,” as if they were corpses and not living human beings.
Referring to fellow human beings as “bodies” is not unusual for Jones. On a chilly December night—a few days before Christmas 2023—Jones filmed a scene from a 47-acre park in Eagle Pass, where local children and families played baseball and soccer before the Texas National Guard turned it into a de facto military base for Governor Greg Abbott’s multi-billion dollar, multi-agency border security initiative, Operation Lone Star. That night, the park was lined with concertina wire, its entrance was barred, and the fields were filled with hundreds of migrants, most of whom had few possessions and slept on the ground under emergency blankets. “So you got big groups of bodies that come in here about every 10 to 15 minutes,” Jones said. “Every silver blanket or bump on the ground is a body,” he added, referring to asylum-seekers.
Jones’ access to DPS and to Operation Lone Star military activities—which serve as popular Hollywood-style backdrops for “border invasion” content creators—helped put him on the radar of Trump’s allies, including Tom Homan, who was an acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first administration and who was recently named the president-elect’s new “border czar.”
In July 2023, Homan founded a nonprofit called Border911, and he later named Jones vice president of the organization, which included other former state and federal law enforcement officers as team members who crisscrossed the country spreading the false narrative that criminal terrorists are invading the United States at the invitation of the Biden administration and Democrats. Border911 members also received government security contracts and speaking gigs for themselves or for companies that employed them, as revealed in a prior investigation in this series. The group argued that only Trump could save America, laying the groundwork for his reelection.
Jones’ DPS contacts were crucial in this pro-Trump messaging. In Border911 videos posted on social media channels and promoted at events, Jones and Homan sweep across the Texas borderlands in state police aircraft, set to a thunderous soundtrack fit for a thriller. “Whether you like President Trump or not, you can’t argue with his success,” Homan says in one video from March 2023, before it cuts to another scene: an airplane hangar in West Texas, where he, Jones, and DPS airmen in flight gear walk in slow motion toward a helicopter.
As of early December, other Border911 team members were being considered for key positions in the incoming Trump administration, including former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who was tapped to lead Customs and Border Protection. With Homan as incoming “border czar,” and assigned by Trump to oversee border enforcement and mass deportations, Jones is uniquely positioned to influence homeland security strategy and messaging in Texas and beyond.
Trump and his allies have made clear that the right wing’s most extreme ideas are now on the table, from constructing deportation camps in Texas to designating Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorists.” Classifying cartels as terrorists has, in Jones’ own words, been one of his goals since retiring from DPS in 2016. For nearly two decades, some Texas Republican officials have tried to convince the federal government to make this decision, but they’ve always been rebuffed partly because it would spark conflict with Mexico, the United States’ closest trading partner.
Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at George Mason University and author of Los Zetas Inc., a book about one of Mexico’s most feared drug cartels, said she does not consider Jones to be a true border authority.“He’s unknown to me. … I don’t consider him an expert,” she told the Observer. But she considers the ideas that Jones and others have espoused, including labeling cartels as foreign terrorists, to be dangerous propaganda that could well be used to justify bombings or other incursions on Mexican soil.
In an essay for the Observer about such proposals, she wrote: “Nobody denies that extreme levels of violence and brutality in Mexico are connected with the drug trade. Something needs to be done, but deploying U.S. troops would only escalate a costly and ineffective drug war and put many innocent lives at risk.”
In the ballroom of a San Antonio Embassy Suites last October, Daniel Korus, a dean at Del Mar College in the coastal city of Corpus Christi, introduced Jones as the keynote speaker for a South Texas regional policy conference, stating that Jones had a 25-year career in border intelligence. “Now, he educates the rest of us,” said Korus, a former high-ranking naval officer.
Jones did not correct the introduction, though most of his time in the state police was actually spent in non-intelligence roles away from the border, according to DPS records. His only recorded formal DPS training course specifically on the subject was “Intelligence Gathering/Sharing/Mapping,” according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, and he took that just a few months before his retirement.
Nonetheless, Jones promotes himself as a border intelligence expert and profits from it. With the All American Speakers Bureau, a platform for hired experts, Jones lists himself as charging $30,000 to $50,000 per speaking gig, though Korus said Jones was paid $10,000 or less for the San Antonio appearance.
SIGN UP FOR TEXAS OBSERVER EMAILS
Dressed in black leather cowboy boots and a matching suit, Jones paced in front of his audience, telling tales of the borderlands and the violence between rival organized crime groups in Mexico. “What happens there is coming here, and I’m gonna show you,” he said.
On a projector screen, Jones displayed graphic videos and told stories about drug cartel members committing lurid acts of violence in Mexico: decapitations with a fillet knife, a head bashed in with a sledgehammer, and the wiping out of most of a town.
“These people live in Texas. We have been dealing with this for many years—but you have not been told,” Jones warned, before moving to the next PowerPoint slide.
Throughout his presentation, a table full of sheriffs in cowboy hats nodded along in agreement as others in the ballroom gasped at the violent scenes. Twice, he paused to ask the audience some version of the question: “Is this a drug trafficking organization—or is this a terrorist organization?”
He told the audience what the foreign terrorist designation would accomplish: expedited investigations into bad actors that would allow police to skirt due process protections, to obtain more resources, and to freeze more organized crime organizations’ assets abroad.
“We’re gonna take this country back.”
Jones has repeated similar arguments in various venues, including a hearing of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Newsmax, the Dr. Phil show, and Tucker Carlson’s former show on Fox News.
To Jones, the most important aspect of the foreign terrorist label seems to be that it could enable hastened deportations for people in any way associated with Mexican drug cartels. “You can’t be a terrorist in our country,” he told Dr. Phil last year. “We can just grab ’em, pick ’em up and remove ’em out of this country, and go after ’em anywhere in the world, and that’s what we really need to do.”
But many of his assertions about the foreign terrorist designation—a process codified in federal law and overseen by the U.S. Department of State—are incorrect, according to experts interviewed by the Observer. Some actions Jones described can already be taken by the government without the foreign terrorist label, such as freezing assets, said former State Department official Jason Blazakis. Whether a suspect is affiliated with a foreign terrorist organization or another criminal network, individuals have a right to due process, he added.
“I think he doesn’t understand how terrorism investigations work,” Blazakis said. “He’s trying to make the designation look like some kind of special panacea.”
During his speech, Jones also informed the audience that the cartels deploy a threat, “plato y plumo”—a misstatement of “plata o plomo” that changes the meaning from a menacing choice between a bribe or a bullet to a perplexing offer of a plate and a nonsense word.
Jones emphasizes different credentials depending on his audience. Sometimes he speaks as a correspondent for Newsmax, and other times as a member of Border911. In legislative settings, he often emphasizes his DPS career, such as when he advocated designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations at a press conference outside the Arizona Capitol. (Representative Steve Montenegro introduced a related bill about a week later.)
Much of Jones’ work for Newsmax relies on strategically edited footage, meant to portray the border as a frightening place and asylum-seekers as criminal invaders.
Last January, volunteers at a humanitarian camp for asylum-seekers near the border in the unincorporated community of Sasabe, Arizona, were surprised to see Jones roll up with a cameraman. As shown in footage aired by Newsmax and separate videos a volunteer provided to the Observer, Jones was accompanied by armed and masked men from Mayhem Solutions Group, a private security firm, who flanked him as he recorded his content. The Mayhem men were mostly dressed in military fatigues, and some wore hats with patches bearing the insignia of Texas DPS Intelligence and Counterterrorism—the division Jones worked in before retiring.
The appearance of these men in Arizona puzzled the volunteers, especially when the arrivals claimed to be part of a state or federal “task force.” One volunteer, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the armed Mayhem personnel left asylum-seekers with the impression that they were police because they wore tactical vests and patches emblazoned with the word “investigator.” Those armed men said they had been hired to collect information, and they “were going around telling people that they were obligated to give them their information, implying that they were a federal agency,” the volunteer said, as previously reported in The Border Chronicle, on the day the men came to the camp. “They said multiple times that they were going to citizen’s arrest us if we tried to interfere with what they were doing, and that they would bring the U.S. forces in if we didn’t step aside.”
Meanwhile, Jones continued to film, the volunteer said. “While these guys were intimidating people, he was talking about all ‘these illegals invading the country.’”
When volunteers asked Jones about his armed companions, he provided little information. “I’m with Newsmax,” the volunteer recalled him saying. “You guys are doing your thing. We’re doing ours.”
The Observer reached the founder of Mayhem Solutions Group, but he claimed he did not know Jones. A state contract database and public records requests show that Mayhem Solutions Group has never held a contract with Texas DPS. The agency did not respond to a request for comment about the security company employees wearing DPS insignia on their hats. The federal Department of Homeland Security stated it held no formal agreement with the company.
In some settings, Jones introduces himself as CEO of Omni Intelligence, which he founded in 2017. The company has been described by the right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation as a provider of “intelligence and analytics services to government agencies and media.” Omni Intelligence has no website, and its business address has alternated between rental homes and P.O. boxes across Central Texas. (Letters sent to two of his business addresses were returned as undeliverable.)
A search of public records revealed one Omni customer: No Greater Love, a nonprofit based in Wimberley that says it educates “millions of Americans daily about the truth of open borders” and holds occasional teach-ins for doomsday preppers at a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Over a two-year period, the group paid Omni Intelligence $45,000, according to its IRS Form 990 tax filings. Its website heavily features Jones’ video content.
It is unclear if Omni has any employees, aside from Jones’ personal assistant, who lives in the Philippines.
One of the firm’s former unpaid consultants was Ammon Blair, a recently retired Border Patrol agent. Blair was also featured in one of Jones’ YouTube videos and on Newsmax. While still at Border Patrol, Blair said he passed intelligence to Jones, and one of those stories went “viral.”
Jones did not respond to repeated requests, via email, letter, and phone for an interview for this story. He also denied a request made in person at the San Antonio conference, saying he was unavailable that day and for the following several weeks, but that he might have time later. Jones never replied to the Observer’s subsequent inquiries.
Last April, Jones appeared with Homan and Trump at the now-president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago Club during a fundraising gala for Border911. As Homan’s sidekick, Jones has identified allies among sheriffs at the border and beyond, as well as other county and state officials who could support and potentially financially benefit from Trump’s mass deportation plans.
In Arizona, Jones describes Pinal County Sheriff (and failed U.S. Senate candidate) Mark Lamb as a “close friend,” and Jones once embedded with Lamb’s agency for a week. Jones also moderated a panel including Lamb and Mark Dannels, a right-wing border sheriff who has referred to deporting undocumented people as a “cleanup.” In Texas, Jones spoke at a rally with Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe, whose department has collaborated with vigilante groups, stocked up on pepperball guns to shoot migrants, and sued the Biden administration over immigration policy.
In Florida, Jones found another powerful ally: Richard Mantei, a state prosecutor who helped lead a year-and-a-half-long grand jury investigation, a non-criminal probe of policies to address illegal immigration. Records show Mantei sent Jones money via Venmo for “Florida expenses” last fall. (The Florida Attorney General’s Office said it lacked records of any related invoice or receipt, and it refused to release any affidavits or grand jury testimony records signed by Jones.) When the same grand jury completed its final policy recommendations, Mantei emailed the document to Homan.
In some video clips, Jones appears as Homan’s right-hand man. Homan often heralds Jones as a premier border expert because of his DPS experience. At a January 2023 press conference outside the Arizona Capitol, Homan introduced Jones as a good friend and a top authority on crime and the drug trade, after citing Jones’ DPS career.
“I’m gonna walk around the country with these men here in this organization,” says Homan in one of Border911’s signature trailers from March 2023, over footage of himself, Jones, and DPS airmen near an agency helicopter, “and educate American people on why the border is a disaster.”
At times Jones appears to have also coached DPS airmen on how—and when—to take videos so he could better use the footage. “Hey, being advised you may have up to 2,000 surging the border in El Paso bro,” Jones wrote to Holland, the chief DPS pilot, in March 2023. “Can you get some video from helicopter ASAP?” In iMessages to Holland in February 2024, he praised state police for the videos they provided. One reads: “Tell the crew great job for me. Best field production of all time.”
In a September 2023 message, Jones invited DPS to steer the narrative he portrays on Newsmax. “I’ll run it Monday,” he replied to a message from Holland. “Anything you want me to say specifically?”
Holland and his airmen have apparently returned the favor for Jones’ flattering coverage by furnishing him with the backdrops for his propaganda videos. In one January 2024 clip, Jones and Homan walk perfectly framed between two DPS aircraft on a tarmac at sunset in West Texas, with mountains in the background.
“You know Tom, this border, it’s gotta get fixed. It’s absolutely unsustainable,” Jones says solemnly, walking beside Homan with the sunset as a backdrop, the sky painted in hues of blue and purple.
Homan responds matter-of-factly: He wakes up every morning pissed off, but at least they’ve got Border911. “We’re gonna take this country back, we’re gonna secure the border, we’re gonna protect our national security,” Homan says.
“We’re not going to get rich doing it,” he adds, not mentioning how Jones and other members of Border911 have already benefited from various government contracts and speaking gigs.
“But what a team we built.”
The post The Border Propagandist appeared first on The Texas Observer.