The National Butterfly Center, which has been mired in litigation over a proposed border wall and the subject of baseless conspiracy theories about sex trafficking across the Mexico border, has closed indefinitely after it received “credible threats” against its staff.
The board of directors of the North American Butterfly Association (NABA) decided that the 100-acre preserve would close to the public “for the immediate future,” which came after a three-day emergency closure a week earlier. The center closed Jan. 28-30 “due to credible threats received” from a former state official regarding activities planned by a We Stand America event in neighboring McAllen, Texas.
“The safety of our staff and visitors is our primary concern,” said Jeffrey Glassberg, president and founder of NABA, said in announcing the closure. “We look forward to reopening, soon, when the authorities and professionals who are helping us navigate this situation give us the green light.”
There was an apparent altercation on Jan. 21 between the center’s executive director, Marianna Treviño Wright, and Kimberley Lowe, a Republican candidate for Congress in southwest Virginia’s 9th District, and a friend who claimed to be a member of the U.S. Secret Service, according to multiple published reports.
“We made the difficult decision to close the center when Marianna was advised by the former state official (whose daughter is the Hidalgo GOP chairperson) that she should be armed at all times or out of town this weekend, because the We Stand American events include a ‘Trump Train”-style “caravan to the border.”
“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may cause to members and visitors, many of whom plan trips months in advance, to experience this truly exception place,” Wright said in the statement. The Rio Grande Valley tourist destination gets more than 35,000 unique visitors and more than 6,000 school children each year.
The board has chosen to pay staff during the unexpected closure, which the center’s leaders emphasized has been caused by “false and defamatory attacks directed by political operatives.”
The Morristown, N.J.-based NABA has been mired in litigation over former President Donald Trump’s plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico, which could lose land for construction. The 100-acre nature preserve in Mission, Texas partially runs along the Rio Grande River. The center filed suit in 2017 against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and in 2019 against We Build The Wall and its founders.
We Build The Wall founder Brian Kolfage and Steve Bannon, a former advisor to Trump, have accused the center of helping sex traffickers smuggle people across the border, which organizational official vehemently have denied. The two were among four people indicted in August 2020 for fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering related to crowdfunding campaigns for We Build The Wall, which was established as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. Bannon was the only one of the four to receive a pardon from Trump before he left office.