Federal agents are trying to determine how a suspected Ohio white supremacist with a felony conviction for manslaughter acquired a cache of 18 assault weapons and other firearms, along with high-capacity magazines and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition, according to federal law enforcement officials and court documents reviewed by NBC News.

The storehouse of weapons was discovered late last  month when FBI agents arrested Richard Schmidt,  47, the owner of a Bowling Green sporting goods store called Spindletop Sports Zone,  on charges of  marketing counterfeit goods -- such as football jerseys with NFL logos -- from China.

Although initially portrayed as a probe into the thriving international market for counterfeit clothing, the case took a surprising turn this week when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland unsealed search warrants and an indictment also charging Schmidt with illegal possession of firearms.

---

According to the documents, FBI agents who searched Schmidt’s sporting goods store and four trailers behind it, found a  stash of weapons that included AR-15 assault rifles, Ruger and Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistols,  bulletproof  body armor and high-capacity magazines as well as ammunition.

The agents also discovered evidence of Schmidt’s ties to the neo-Nazi movement, documents show. Among the evidence seized, according to search warrants, was a video of a national convention of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement; bumper stickers of the National Alliance party, another neo-Nazi group; a “Jewish 500” list -- a supposed roster of Jewish-owned businesses -- and paraphernalia from the “Waffen SS,” Adolph Hitler’s Nazi military force in Germany from the early 1930s through World War II, according to the search warrants.

A federal law enforcement official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that FBI counterterrorism agents involved in the  case  had picked up evidence that Schmidt  may have been planning attacks against Jewish and civil rights groups in the Detroit area. “This is an active investigation,” said another federal law enforcement official when asked if Schmidt was believed to have been working with any others in the neo-Nazi movement.

In the indictment unsealed this week, Schmidt was charged with three counts of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and body armor and one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods.

Schmidt’s lawyer, federal public defender Andy Hart, did not respond to a request for comment. 

The law enforcement officials said the case appears to illustrate some of the gaps in current  background checks for gun purchasers that President Barack Obama has proposed closing as part of his package of executive actions and legislative proposals released this week aimed at curbing gun violence. Schmidt was charged with murder and felonious assault in 1989 after killing a Hispanic man  and shooting two others with a semi-automatic pistol during a traffic dispute. He later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison. Federal officials were not immediately able to provide information on when he was released from prison.  

Despite a federal law that prohibits convicted felons from buying firearms, Schmidt was still able to acquire his stockpile – though authorities don’t yet know how he acquired them. Federal agents have been trying for weeks to trace the weapons, but officials said they have so far made little progress. This could indicate that Schmidt purchased his weapons from private dealers or gun shows, where background checks are currently not required, one official said. But he also could have obtained them on the black market.

“It is deeply troubling that law enforcement found this man, with a prior homicide conviction, in possession of an arsenal,” said Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney for Cleveland.

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Mark Potok, who tracks hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the group had found an entry that appeared to be from Schmidt on a neo-Nazi website several years ago, using the Yahoo profile of “Vinlander 101” and declaring his plans to set up a “historical preservation” group. (One of the trailers behind Schmidt’s sporting goods store was registered to the “Vinland Preservation League” -- a now defunct nonprofit.) He noted that the use of the word “Vinland” was likely inspired by the “Vinland Social Club,” a now largely dormant neo-Nazi skinhead group that emphasized the early Vikings role in colonizing the American continent. 

“The sad reality is there are people around this country who are building up enormous arsenals of  weapons because they think the end is coming -- either  a race war, or the new world order … or some other form of apocalypse,” he said. 

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Santiago Ortiz was deeply in love and, he believed, near death when he asked Pablo Garcia to leave his native Venezuela and join him in New York. There was no time to bother with a visa. Ortiz was HIV positive and he wanted Garcia with him.

That was 26 years ago. Ortiz, an American, is still alive. He and Garcia were married in Connecticut last year. And Garcia still does not have a visa. The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, blocks federal recognition of same-sex relationships.

"I told him, 'I might die tomorrow, I might die in a month,'" recalled Ortiz, soon to be 57, about that romantic moment in Caracas 26 years ago. "I said, 'Don't wait. Come now.'"

---

The medical treatment of HIV has advanced markedly since the 1980s. Full legal acceptance of gay marriage still has a ways to go.

 

Their best hope for getting the same visa a heterosexual couple would be eligible for rests with the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to hear a challenge to DOMA this year in what could be a breakthrough for gay rights in America.

Although the two men were married in Connecticut, one of nine states that allows same-sex marriage, Garcia was denied his application for permanent residence — which is routine for foreign nationals in heterosexual marriages with Americans, even when the foreigner has overstayed his or her visa.

Garcia, 52, a playwright and a doctoral student in Spanish literature, remains in the United States illegally.

"He swept me off my feet," Ortiz, a retired school psychologist, said as he sipped coffee in the couple's colorful apartment in Queens. "For me, it's been easy. I can go wherever I want, I can travel, and Pablo has been there for me. Pablo doesn't have his papers and it's unfair."

There are at least 28,500 same-sex couples in the United States in which one partner is a U.S. citizen and the other is not, and 11,500 same-sex couples where neither partner is a U.S. citizen, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles.

This year, Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to endorse same-sex marriage, and in September his administration issued a policy that lesbian and gay couples be eligible for delays in deportation.

Even so, the wait has been excruciating for bi-national couples living with the threat that one partner could be deported.

"If you are hours from being put on a plane and being deported, there is relief (legal recourse)," said Rachel Tiven of Immigration Equality, a Washington-based group that is representing Ortiz and Garcia. "There is still no access to green cards or any other affirmative immigration benefit."

The Supreme Court was expected to decide whether it will hear a legal challenge to DOMA this session, and could make an announcement as soon as Friday.

'Baby Whisperer'
It took a decade of friendship for Maria del Mar Verdugo, a citizen of Spain, and Heather Morgan, an American living in New York, to realize they were in love and wanted to spend their lives together. They were married in 2011 and now share a sunny one-bedroom apartment near Columbia University in Manhattan.

Relaxing in their pajamas on a recent Sunday, they talked about living with the worry that Verdugo, who is 43, could lose her marketing job — and with it her employer's sponsorship of her work visa. Her current visa expires in 2013.

They long to have children, but say they are putting that off for now. Their preferred parenting roles — where Morgan, who works for a Jewish charity, would continue to work full-time and Verdugo would work part-time but stay home — is impossible as long as Verdugo's immigration status is attached to her job.

"I certainly always knew I wanted to be a mom. And Mar, if you see her with kids, she's like the baby whisperer," said Morgan, who is 36. "I guess more than anything we'd like to have the choice of when and how to raise children."

Still, they consider themselves fortunate because even the worst case scenario — Verdugo losing her work visa, and the couple having to relocate to Spain — would be tolerable. Spain is one of 11 countries that has legalized same-sex marriage and the couple has a network of friends and family in the country.

Another 14 countries also recognize same-sex couples for immigration purposes, but not the United States because of DOMA.

For Richard Dennis and Jair Izquierdo, who have been together for six years, Obama's 2011 directive came too late. Izquierdo, a 35-year-old makeup artist from Peru, came to New York in 2001 on a tourist visa and stayed on.

Two years ago, Izquierdo arrived at what he thought was a bridal job, but it turned out to be a sting operation and he was arrested. Several months later, in late 2010, Izquierdo was deported and given a 10-year ban on returning to the country.

The two speak or text several times a day, but Dennis, who is 49, says the home they bought together in Jersey City feels empty. Dennis said he has considered joining Izquierdo in Peru, but said he is reluctant in part because his own command of Spanish is poor.

"It hasn't split us up," Dennis said. "Physically it has, but not emotionally."

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Birmingham, Ala. -- Maria Cruz Ramirez thrust up a small banner reading “undocumented,” interrupting a hearing on strict state immigration laws to share the impact that the legislation has had on her life.

“I am here to lift up the voice of my community, of my children, all those families who have been separated. I am here and I want to present this so you can see it,” Ramirez, 46, cried out in Spanish as she held up the sign at the meeting in Birmingham. “I am a mother, a responsible mother … I am not a criminal and I am here to defend my rights.”

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A mother of three and former owner of a hair salon in Mexico, Ramirez, who lives in Arizona, never thought she would end up here, as an immigration activist, possibly jeopardizing her life in the U.S. But after 11 years in this country, she decided to throw herself into the public spotlight as Arizona’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants threatened her family.

“I’m fighting for them and for everyone else, for my community, for the mothers who don’t want to or can’t or don’t know how to support their children,” she said. “I want to represent all of those mothers and all of those young people.”

As a minibus shuttled her and other undocumented immigrants on a nighttime ride last week through the South, a touring protest called the “undocubus,” Ramirez recalled her family’s journey to the U.S.

They came here like many others, seeking better opportunities. She wanted her children to go to good schools and learn two languages. Her husband, Eugenio Sanchez, said it would be a step up from their life back home. They entered the country on tourist visas, which they overstayed, Ramirez said.

But as her two oldest children, Hugo, now 24, and Alina, 19, graduated from high school in Phoenix and tried to move on to college and jobs, their legal status was put in sharp relief. Neither can get steady work and they have had to curtail their studies since a 2006 Arizona law made them ineligible for in-state tuition, meaning higher education is prohibitively expensive.

Ramirez can’t get a stable job, either, since she is undocumented, leaving it up to her husband, who fixes cars, to be the sole provider. But due to the passage of another state law, the controversial SB1070 -- under which authorities must determine immigration status during a lawful stop -- the family has heightened fears, with Eugenio Sanchez opting to hide out one night when authorities suddenly showed up in the area where he works.

“That's the first thing that happened to me with the new laws,” Ramirez said of the scare for her husband, though he returned home the next day without incident. “Day by day, I’ve been scared for my children because they drive. So, I say, ‘What is going to happen if tomorrow one of them gets stopped and I’m not going to see them? Or maybe, they’ll detain me while I'm on the street, what’s going to happen to them?’ It's gotten me to think, ‘What am I doing here? Should I go? Should I stay?’ It’s something that you can’t prevent, what may happen.”

The family has had hard discussions about the situation they find themselves in. Tears were shed over the frustration.

“We would find ... a wall between us, between everything we wanted and between what we could have ... in Mexico,” Alina said, noting that her mom asked many times if they wanted to return to their home country.

Ramirez said her son, Hugo, at one point questioned why they even came.

“He told me, ‘See, why did you bring us here? It’s your fault for bringing us here because we came here without a permit,’” she said, at times wiping away tears. “And I told him, ‘The truth is, it’s true. As a mother, it’s my fault because I was thinking for you and deciding for you, and I think instead of doing good, I did bad for you.’ Because, maybe over there, we would be poor but they would have more.”

Hugo, who is proud of his mom's activism, didn’t recall this specific conversation, but Alina said: "Maybe we did blame her and it's understandable but it's ... not her fault.

"I see where she is coming from and I know she was doing something better for us because she wants us to be better people,” she added.

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Ramirez began volunteering 18 months ago with a group of youth like her own children, who could be eligible for the Dream Act -- immigration reform legislation that has stalled in Congress. But the trigger to stepping up her activism, and putting herself in the spotlight, happened after she saw Hugo and her 17-year-old daughter, Rocio, get arrested while protesting earlier this year on a Phoenix street against Arizona’s immigration restrictions.

“They stood up for themselves and fought for their own rights and dignity,” she said.

When she heard about the bus full of undocumented immigrants heading across the U.S. as a form of visible protest, she said, “My heart jumped and I said, ‘This is my chance.’”

“From the first moment, I thought that it was going to be an impossible dream, even being on the bus, I started asking myself, ‘What I am going to do? What am I doing?’ But now that I feel more part of the group and I participated in different things, I've liked it,” she said.

So far, the bus has wound through Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama on its way to North Carolina for the Democratic National Convention, which begins Sept. 4.

“I armed myself with bravery,” Ramirez said. “I’m not scared anymore because I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m defending my rights as a person, as a human being, and I think if they take away my liberty for a couple of days, I give them up happily.”

Ramirez got legal advice before she left on the trip. She was told that if arrested, she would be low priority for deportation since she hadn’t, for example, committed a crime. But she also learned she didn’t have anything that would help her case, either, such as a relative who is a U.S. citizen, and that ultimately a decision on deportation would be a matter of prosecutorial discretion.

Her children, however, may stand to benefit from a new federal initiative known as the “deferred action” program, under which certain young immigrants in the country without documents can get a two-year work permit and a reprieve from deportation. But it won’t help the parents of those who qualify, which is hard, Alina said.

“It’s sad to think about ... them not having papers,” she said, also noting how proud she was of her mom. “She’s doing it for us so I am so grateful … . Even though we miss her a lot, we know she is doing something good."

On the road, Ramirez has heard from opposing voices. One of those at the Birmingham hearing, Carol Swain, a professor of politics and law at Vanderbilt University, said the group had not chosen the right venues for their protest.

“Take your protest to Congress and sit outside their doors,” Swain, a self-described conservative, said later by phone. She added that she thought “the average citizen doesn’t understand how someone can be in the country, you know, undocumented or illegal and then they’re making demands and flaunting the fact that they don’t have papers. But when I listen to the people (the undocubus group), I see their sincerity, that they really do believe that they’re entitled ... to be legal and to have all the benefits of American citizens."

"I think we’re sort of speaking past each other," she added, "and I think they’re taking their protest to the wrong party.”

Such a critique is not likely to dissuade Ramirez, who said the bus protest has given her strength and taught her a lot.

“I ask myself every day, ‘What a turn my life made, a total turn,’” she said. “I think it was my time to live. It was my time to give to someone else.”

NBC News' Natalia Jimenez contributed to this this report.

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