Documents show Apache Junction man planned to take IEDs to the border

APACHE JUNCTION, AZ - Court documents paint new details about how authorities intercepted a dozen homemade pipe bombs and other explosive devices from a white supremacist apparently headed to the border.

Jeffrey Harbin was pulled over in Apache Junction on January 14 by Department of Public Safety officers. Inside his truck, they found improvised explosive devices along with explosive making powders and materials. According to the documents, he spoke of a “homemade grenade” he referred to as his “little baby.”

Harbin was a known member of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white supremacist hate group.

“This is a person who has been raised and imbibed Neo-Nazi ideology for a very long time,” said Heidi Beirich, Director of Research at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It’s very frightening to think of somebody like that possessing weapons.”

According to a search warrant, after Harbin’s girlfriend, Heather Harner, expressed her concern to an informant about the explosive materials, the informant called Harbin and invited him to assist in operations along the border.

Investigators then searched his Apache Junction apartment, also listed as Harner’s address.

An NSM spokesman said Harbin is no longer a part of their group; Arizona NSM Executive Officer Harry Hughes said members do not condone violence.

“We’re not a street gang, we’re not thugs,” said Hughes. “We promote nonviolent change.”

Beirich said the group’s former spokesman is in prison for making threats, and its leader also has a criminal record.

“Any other organization has an assortment of people who have what I would call, ‘colorful histories’ in their past, but that's not what we're about,” Hughes said.

“That is a ridiculous description about what NSM is about,” Beirich said. “National Socialist Movement is a direct take off the Hitler movement. I mean, this is what they’re following, Nazism. They hate Jews, they hate brown-skinned people.”

Harbin is seen in a 2010 ABC15 story promoting “Report an Illegal Day” on Cinco de Mayo.

“Everybody has dislikes for some kind of people,” said Hughes. “There’s hardly anybody out there that I would consider to be totally neutral."