A Mysterious Flyer, a Tiny Charity and a Disinformation Campaign at the Border

The two men rang the bell at the Resource Center Matamoros, a migrant aid group in the Mexican border city, and, speaking in broken Spanish, said they were looking for volunteer work.

Security footage shared with The New York Times shows the pair standing on the sidewalk in shorts and flip-flops as they talked via speakerphone with Gaby Zavala, the center’s founder. After about half an hour, they left.

Zavala didn’t know it yet, but the men were not volunteers. They were provocateurs building an online following with hidden camera exposés and ambushes that claim to uncover abuse and election fraud in the U.S. immigration system.

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Zavala realized something was off a few hours later, when the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, uploaded images of a flyer with her group’s logo to social media, thrusting her organization into the center of a political firestorm.

The flyer, written in Spanish and purportedly found hanging in portable toilets in the migrant camp across the street from the center, carried an explosive message to would-be immigrants: “reminder to vote for president Biden when you are in the united states. We need four more years of his administration in order to remain open.”

For many on the right, it was a smoking gun, confirming debunked theories about the left’s schemes to urge immigrants to vote illegally for Democrats. The post, uploaded April 15, quickly racked up more than 9 million views on the social platform X and was shared by multiple elected officials, including Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., a former presidential candidate.

The next morning, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., held up an oversized printout of the flyer in a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing. “I would call it treason,” Greene said to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was sitting before the committee.

Zavala calls the document a crude fake and part of a plot to propel false, anti-immigration narratives in an election year. The phone number listed on the flyer is out of date, she noted. Some of the language is lifted directly from her group’s English language website but appears to be translated by software.

But perhaps the strongest evidence, she said, was the presence of Anthony and Joshua Rubin, brothers from Long Island known online as the Muckrakers, at the building earlier that same day, trying to gain access under false pretenses.

“I would never encourage immigrants to vote, because they can’t,” said Zavala, 41, who started the organization in 2019 and manages it from Texas. No one contacted her to verify the document before it was posted, she said, and she has since received some 50 death threats and racist emails. “I feel violated.”

In an interview with the Times, Anthony Rubin acknowledged that he and his brother falsely identified themselves as volunteers that day. But he said they did not plant the flyer. Mike Howell, executive director of the Oversight Project, an arm of the Heritage Foundation that first posted the document on X, said he stood behind their claims.

“Nothing that we put online has been proven in the least bit inaccurate,” he said.

The Oversight Project is something of a departure for the once-wonkish think tank. The project’s website describes its mission as “innovative investigations utilizing cutting-edge resources and contacts” in order to drive “accountability of the destructive work of the radical, progressive Left.” Howell, who calls himself a “deportation scientist” on X, said his group had worked closely with the Rubin brothers before.

The Rubin brothers have made a name for themselves by taking a page from the gotcha undercover methods of conservative investigative groups like Project Veritas. Their website promotes edited videos and articles focused on immigration, child trafficking and other hot-button topics on the right.

In their videos, they ask migrants — many who do not speak English and profess little knowledge of U.S. politics — whether they prefer President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump. The Rubin brothers accuse the U.S. government of abducting children at the border, repeatedly call immigrants “invaders,” and use the phrase “military-age men” to describe migrants.

Their work has been amplified by a number of prominent anti-immigration voices online, including Michael Yon, a former Green Beret who leads tours for right-wing influencers, including Anthony Rubin, to the Darién Gap, a crowded migrant crossing in Panama.

Rubin’s travels have raised his profile in conservative media, landing him appearances on web shows hosted by Ben Shapiro and Alex Jones, as well as on “Primetime,” Jesse Watters’ show on Fox News.

“You’re a very brave man, and you’re getting some stuff no one’s getting, so bravo; keep it coming,” Watters told Rubin during an appearance on the network late last month.

Howell, a former lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security under Trump, declined to say whether the Oversight Project was funding the Rubin brothers’ work, citing concerns about “very powerful people that wish to do harm to this country.”

Last month, the project released a hidden-camera video the Muckrakers made in the offices of a nonprofit in New York that offers food, education and legal aid to immigrants.

In the video, Anthony Rubin, speaking in a foreign accent, unsuccessfully tries to persuade employees of the nonprofit, La Jornada NY, to sell him “residency papers.” The next day, a Spanish speaker makes a similar request and is given a signed letter affirming his New York residency.

“Anyone, from someone seeking unauthorized employment to spies, saboteurs or even terrorists, could obtain a government-issued ID by visiting La Jornada and acquiring fraudulent papers,” Anthony Rubin said in the video, which was viewed more than 1 million times on X and amplified by Elon Musk.

Soon after it was posted, the Heritage Foundation sent a letter to Attorney General Letitia James of New York requesting an investigation.

La Jornada’s executive director, Pedro Rodriguez, called Rubin’s characterization misleading. He noted that the residency letter was only one of four requirements for procuring a New York City ID card, which itself does not entitle immigrants to work or give them legal status of any kind.

“All it gives you is an address where you can receive mail,” he said of the letter. “They accused us of doing all those things, which are lies.”

Rodriguez said he had not heard from the attorney general’s office. But he said a barrage of hateful phone calls and emails since the Project Oversight post went viral convinced him to stop giving out the letters. “We don’t want to invite more problems,” he said.

Howell defended the investigation. “We’re going to sound the alarm,” he said. “We’re not going to wait till the day after the election when illegals vote in it.”

Accusations about immigrants voting illegally have exploded since the 2020 election, set off by Trump’s false claims of fraud and spread by a series of debunked films.

Nonprofit groups that aid migrants also have become a target for right-wing activists, who often claim the organizations profit from their work. The assertion may explain why Resource Center Matamoros, a tiny entity with just three staff members including Zavala, ended up entangled with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington power center with a nearly $100 million budget.

According to Zavala, when the Rubin brothers knocked on the center’s door, they said they were employees of HIAS, a U.S.-based group formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

The charity is frequently singled out by immigration opponents, who note that Mayorkas briefly served on its board. In October, the Rubin brothers published an article titled “Hebrew Immigration Aid Society Exposed,” focusing on its activities in Panama.

HIAS had previously rented space from the Resource Center Matamoros. It gave up its lease in early 2021, but the center’s website was never updated. It still says that its office is “the home for HIAS” — language that appears on the flyer.

Anthony Rubin told the Times he could not recall identifying himself as a HIAS employee. A spokesperson for HIAS said that the Rubin brothers had never worked for the group.

After the flyer was posted online, immigration experts and others familiar with migrant camps quickly expressed skepticism about its authenticity. The Associated Press, which first reported on the flyer, noted the poor translation and grammatical errors. Bill Melugin, a Fox News reporter who covers immigration, wrote on X that the document seemed “fake or doctored.”

The Oversight Project and the Rubin brothers have stood by their account of the episode, even as details have shifted.

In their initial posts, they said the flyers were “discovered” throughout the migrant camp across the street from the Resource Center Matamoros, and the Rubin brothers said they were “tipped off” to travel to Matamoros by a source in New York.

But last Thursday, Howell’s group posted on X portions of a “sworn statement” by an unnamed person who appears to live in the Matamoros area and describes taking a flyer from inside the center’s office, sending a photo of it to the Muckrakers and then shooting video of the flyers hung in portable toilets in the camp.

Howell declined to share the full statement or identify who signed it, citing concerns about “Mexican cartels, affiliated gangs inside the U.S., weaponized agencies of the Biden Administration, and lawfare.”

The Oversight Project also posted a 9-second clip of audio of the conversation between Anthony Rubin and Zavala. “In all honesty,” Rubin can be heard saying, “we’re just trying to help as many people as possible before Trump gets reelected.”

Zavala replies, with a laugh, “Believe me, we’re in the same boat.”

In its post online, the Oversight Project said the quote indicated Zavala wanted to “help as many illegals as possible.” She said she had been speaking about volunteer opportunities in the area helping migrant children who had suffered trauma.

Several other charities working in and around Matamoros declined requests for interviews about whether they had ever seen the flyer, or others like it, in the camp. Jennifer Harbury, an immigration lawyer and a member of Angry Tias & Abuelas, a group that provides essential items and legal aid to migrant families on the Mexican side of the border, said she understood their fears.

“As if we don’t already have enough trouble just trying to keep people safe down here,” said Harbury, who said she had interviewed hundreds of migrants seeking asylum over the years, many of them victims of violence and rape.

She said she instantly recognized the flyer as phony but worried what impact it would have on voters.

“There’s exaggeration and puffery, and then there’s outright fabrication,” Harbury said. “And that’s not fair to Americans or immigrants.”

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