Ali G Film Lures Real Border Patriots Into Satirical Mission
An aspiring actor and a local Republican official were recruited via Craigslist for a staged border operation, later revealed to be part of Sacha Baron Cohen's new film Ali G: Who Iz I?.
A $300 Craigslist ad recruiting 'patriotic legal Americans' lured aspiring actor Joshua Loudermilk into a staged border mission. Joshua Loudermilk, a 54-year-old from North Carolina, claimed he was in on the joke in Sacha Baron Cohen's new Ali G film, though the film-makers reportedly did not realise this. His experience began in September 2025 when he spotted the post by the American Citizen Initiative, which promised travel expenses for an exclusive, hands-on event experience concerning the border crisis.
The mission details
Loudermilk joined Michael Aboud, chair of the El Paso county Republican party, on what they believed was a real mission. The objective was to stop the birth of a fictional South American drugs kingpin's baby. The operation involved abducting a woman in labour, abandoning her in a deserted medical facility, and kidnapping her newborn child, which was actually a lifelike prosthetic. They then drove the baby in a zipped bag to the border to deliver it by drone to Mexico. Aboud ultimately decided to drop the baby dangling from a drone at considerable height to prevent it from touching US soil.
The absurd weaponry
During the mission, the participants were introduced to bizarre weaponry by their recruiter, Col Erran Morad. Morad demonstrated a top-secret new gun shaped like a strap-on, from which bullets are fired from the anus. Loudermilk volunteered to try the weapon, and Morad showed him the trigger system, which involved pumping an attached rubber penis. Loudermilk later said he handed the boring drone remote to Aboud and instead grabbed the butt-gun to yell about defending themselves.
The deception revealed
Participants like Loudermilk and Aboud were tricked into believing the mission was real. Aboud claimed the recruitment emails seemed official and described the event as a 'small documentary about the border'. He said he never signed anything agreeing to do a movie and did not give permission for his appearance, later threatening to sue Cohen for being misled. Loudermilk said he kept trying to make Aboud believe he believed the mission was real to keep him from quitting. He expressed surprise that Aboud did not figure it out, questioning why they would recruit someone like him to defend the border. Cohen has defended reviving the Ali G character, stating that the fact Ali G is outdated and problematic is the very reason he resurrected him. Loudermilk declined to defend Aboud's decision to endanger the baby by dropping it from the drone, though he expressed sympathy for his discomfort.
