The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Hundreds of conservative politicians and rallygoers are gathering this weekend on the Texas-Mexico. Concerned by “credible threats,” the National Butterfly Center closed on Friday and will stay that way through Sunday.
The National Butterfly Center, a private nature reserve that spans 100 acres in the Rio Grande Valley, is one of the country’s most popular eco-tourism destinations, nonprofit group Border Report noted this week.
“We are writing to let you know the National Butterfly Center will be closed Friday, Jan. 28 – Sunday, Jan. 30, due to credible threats we have received from a former state official, regarding activities planned by the We Stand America event, taking place in McAllen, TX, this weekend,” the center wrote in a letter to donors this week.
In the past, conspiracy theorists and anti-immigrant activists falsely claimed the National Butterfly Center was a front for sex traffickers, the Daily Beast reported Friday. The center is a refuge for hundreds of butterfly species.
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Dubbed “We Stand America,” the three-day border rally kicked off in McAllen on Friday. Participants could pay a $15 attendance fee or all the way up to $2,500 for a “private reception event” attended by “national and border security experts” and retired Gen. Michael Flynn, who supports the QAnon conspiracy theory and reportedly called for a Myanmar-like military coup in Dallas last year. (Flynn claims he didn’t call for a coup.)
URGENT NOTICE! National Butterfly Center CLOSED Jan 28-30 due to credible threats. Please read more & SHARE here: https://t.co/joMfYz4Zya
— National Butterfly (@NatButterflies) January 27, 2022
Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller is also slated to speak at the event.
We Stand America‘s website recycles conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants, such as claims that people who cross the border do so at the behest of “their Marxist overlords” so that they can “get on the government dole.”
“The McAllen, Texas, event will focus on border law enforcement and the direct connection to election integrity from a Biblical worldview,” the website also says.
Marianna Treviño-Wright, the executive director of the National Butterfly Center, told the Daily Beast that concerns over the rally have “made it very difficult to focus on our conservation and environmental education efforts.”
In the past, Treviño-Wright was a vocal opponent of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. In 2019, the center filed a restraining order against the wall project.
Earlier this week, Buzzfeed and the Daily Beast reported about a confrontation involving Kimberly Lowe, a far-right U.S. congressional candidate from Virginia, and another woman who claimed to belong to the Secret Service. The women reportedly claimed they had come to the center to see “the illegals crossing on the rafts.” Lowe apparently mentioned being armed in video posted online.
On Jan. 23, Lowe wrote on Twitter that she “went where no one else goes” – the border – “to ground zero to see the humanitarian crisis we have on our hands.” (Maybe she isn’t aware of the millions of Americans who live in the borderlands.)
The rally in McAllen comes a day after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and 12 attorneys general from around the country, as well as Texas AG Ken Paxton, gathered in Weslaco, not far from the Texas-Mexico border. During a briefing, Abbott appealed for help to fight both cartels and President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. (He claimed cartels are using TikTok to recruit human smugglers.)
