Politics

U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez has hitched his reelection campaign to a full-blown radical anti-ICE activist in a new left-wing video attacking Republican congressional candidate Greg Cunningham, a former Marine, police officer, and undercover detective.

The video, posted directly by Vasquez on X and credited to Courier New Mexico, features Ben Montoya, a they/them activist and podcast producer whose uncovered public posts show a long history of anti-ICE rhetoric, anti-police commentary, anti-prison activism, anti-capitalist views, and profane attacks on conservatives.

The video attempts to smear Cunningham by tying him to Legacy Church in Albuquerque, Charlie Kirk, and traditional Christian beliefs on marriage and gender. It opens by calling Cunningham the “megachurch pastor’s pick” and a “MAGA-backed candidate” trying to flip New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District.

The Courier video claims Cunningham was inspired to run after a speech by the conservative now-slain activist Charlie Kirk at Legacy Church. It then displays language from the church’s website stating that “God created male and female” and that the church only sanctions marriage between “a man and a woman.”

From there, the video warns that abortion and “LGBTQ” rights are “protected in New Mexico” but “face challenges from candidates aligned with churches that oppose them.”

But there is a glaring problem with the attack: the video does not show Cunningham saying he is “anti-gay,” nor does it provide evidence that he is targeting gay New Mexicans. Instead, it leans on supposed guilt by association, taking a church’s statement of faith and using it to portray Cunningham as extreme.

That smear becomes even more revealing when looking at the person Vasquez chose to amplify.

Posts and profile information uncovered from Montoya’s public accounts show the Courier New Mexico personality using they/them pronouns and listing #BlackLivesMatter on X. Montoya’s linked Tumblr profile includes the slogans “Free Palestine” and “F**k ICE.”

That was not a one-off.

This January, Montoya proposed an anti-ICE protest being held in Albuquerque, calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In July 2020, Montoya reposted a claim about ICE policy affecting international students and added the hashtag “#AbolishICE.” On the same day, Montoya quoted a Santa Fe New Mexican story about migrants on a hunger strike and added “#AbolishICE” and “#AbolishPrisons.”

Montoya wrote that migrants “were on a dayslong hunger strike when guards entered their prison dormitory in full riot gear — gas masks, shields and canisters of pepper spray,” then tied the post to abolitionist slogans.

In another uncovered post, Montoya reacted to a story about immigration enforcement by writing, “Another revolting story that I had no idea of until today. This f**king country…”

Montoya also attacked civilian border-security efforts in New Mexico, writing, “I can’t think of a bigger waste of time than pointing a big a** gun at nothing for days.” In the same thread, Montoya described the border crisis narrative as a “manufactured ‘crisis at the border’” and accused border-security activists of acting under “white supremacist” logic.

The pattern goes beyond immigration enforcement.

Montoya promoted abolitionist policing ideas, including #8ToAbolition, a framework that rejects ordinary police reform and pushes toward dismantling policing and prisons as currently structured.

In posts about the 2020 shooting of Rodney Applewhite by New Mexico State Police, Montoya wrote, “His name was Rodney Applewhite,” adding that he was “murdered by NM state police because of a ‘traffic stop.’” Montoya also amplified language claiming Applewhite was “lynched by state police.”

Even while acknowledging in a thread that Applewhite fled a traffic stop, drove dangerously, and tried to grab an officer’s gun, Montoya rejected the idea that the shooting was justified and wrote, “Black lives f**king matter and police must be held accountable for every life they’ve taken.”

That is the radical voice Vasquez chose to elevate in an attack on Cunningham — a former law enforcement officer.

Montoya’s broader online presence also shows the same ideological worldview. One uncovered post promoted Democracy Now as “independent media that is critical of military industrial complex and capitalism.” Another response to NPR’s Throughline suggested an episode on “the symbiotic relationship between mass incarceration and capitalism.”

Other posts show open hostility toward President Donald Trump. One post simply read, “F**K DONALD TRUMP.” Another post reacted to Trump’s 2020 Republican National Convention imagery by claiming it felt “like a literal horror movie” and sharing the line, “Fascism has indeed arrived draped in a flag.”

This is not a neutral messenger. This is an activist with a documented history of hard-left, anti-ICE, anti-police, anti-prison, anti-capitalist rhetoric.

And that is exactly why Vasquez’s decision to promote the video matters.

Vasquez has spent years trying to run from his own anti-law-enforcement baggage. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter era, Vasquez appeared in a local television interview at a protest and said, “We need serious police reform in this country.” He then added, “It’s not just about defunding police, it’s about defunding a system that privileges white people over everyone else.”

The interview became even more controversial after reporting identified Vasquez as the masked man in the clip, despite the interview being attributed to another name at the time. His campaign later said the name issue came from the station and that he declined to give his name because he wanted the focus on protest organizers.

But the words were his.

Vasquez also has a record of since-deleted posts that mirror the same activist language Montoya has used. CNN’s KFile reported that Vasquez deleted progressive tweets attacking oil and gas, rationalizing rioting, and comparing Trump’s America to the Ku Klux Klan.

In one deleted tweet, Vasquez wrote, “The tip of the spear of a white supremacist system ends in state sanctioned, cold-blooded murder of black individuals.” He continued by saying there was “so much to undo” and “shift power structures,” adding, “That’s why the cars and buildings are burning.”

Ironically, it is Vasquez who has spewed racism, calling a black man a “n—er,” according to a police report.

That language lines up almost perfectly with Montoya’s worldview: police as an arm of a racist system, ICE as something to abolish, prisons as oppressive, capitalism as tied to incarceration, and Christians as dangerous extremists.

Vasquez later tried to clean up the record, saying he opposed defunding the police and claiming he supported police funding while on the Las Cruces City Council. But his past statements continue to follow him for a reason.

Now, he is not just being judged by an old clip. He is actively promoting a new attack from a radical left-wing activist whose record reinforces the very worldview Vasquez claims not to hold.

Cunningham’s background could not be more different. Cunningham is a former Recon Marine, police officer, and undercover detective who has campaigned on public safety, service, border security, and support for law enforcement.

The Courier video’s attack on Cunningham is therefore not just about one Republican candidate. It is part of a broader left-wing strategy: make Christian beliefs sound hateful, make law-and-order candidates sound dangerous, and let anti-police activists do the talking.

That, mixed with Montoya’s posts mocking Jesus, saying God being “killed” would be “quite the payoff,” and Christians in general also play into this deep anti-Christian sentiment spewed by the Courier. 

Courier New Mexico is part of Courier Newsroom, a national progressive dark money media network that expanded into New Mexico in 2026. Axios has described Courier as a news group with a “progressive perspective,” and Courier itself describes its model as “values-driven” media. The group, which is funded by billionaire George Soros, has been accused in the past of being “driven by political agendas intended to manipulate unwitting readers” and labeled “pink slime journalism.”

So when Vasquez posts Courier’s video, he is not sharing some neutral fact-check. He is amplifying a progressive media hit featuring an activist with a long paper trail of radical rhetoric.

That raises a simple question for voters in southern New Mexico: Why is Gabe Vasquez using a they/them, “F**k ICE,” #AbolishICE activist to attack a former police detective?

“My wife Jennifer and I have built our life around faith, family and service. Gabe Vasquez and his friends are attacking me for my faith because they’re getting desperate. And every New Mexican can see right through it,” Cunningham told the Piñon Post.

“The truth is, Gabe isn’t just attacking me. He’s attacking every person of faith who wants to make their community a better place. This isn’t going to slow us down. We have a mission to accomplish.”

For a congressman still trying to convince voters he is not anti-police, Vasquez just made that job much harder.

He could have defended his record. He could have debated Cunningham on the border, crime, inflation, energy, or public safety.

Instead, Vasquez boosted a radical left-wing attack from a person whose own posts show hostility toward ICE, prisons, police, Trump supporters, capitalism, and traditional values.

That says far more about Gabe Vasquez than it does about Greg Cunningham.

Editor’s note: All noted references have been saved by the Piñon Post with timestamps, screenshots, URL links, and other metadata to ensure their preservation.