He was a co-founder of the Brown Berets, a Chicano working class youth organization in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s.

See his website: carlosmontes.org He has been facing charges since 2011 on a firearms violation that he and supporters insist is unsubstantiated and politically motivated, intended to stifle dissent.

It set up branches in Texas, New Mexico, New York, Florida, Chicago, St. Louis and other metropolitan areas with Chicano populations.

Montes was indicted twice for the ELA Blowout (he was one of the East LA 13) and later with ten others for conspiracy to commit arson by the Los Angeles Police Department at a demonstration against then Governor Ronald Reagan in 1969.

After threats against his life and beatings by the police and many arrests on false charges, he went underground and lived in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and later in El Paso, Texas, where he did organized labor.

Montes has been organizing against FBI raids that were deemed unnecessary which tend to focus on dismantling and preventing activist group activity through intimidation.

[3] According to reports, his home was ransacked and his computer, cell phones and hundreds of documents such as photographs, diskettes and mementos of his current political activity were removed by FBI.