Butterfly-Gate: How a Butterfly Center Became the Target of Far-Right Conspiracies

The National Butterfly Center, located along the U.S.-Mexico border, is owned and run by the nonprofit North American Butterfly Association. It’s a conservation project for wild butterflies located on 100-acres of botanical gardens in Mission, Texas.

The center closed its doors indefinitely on February 1st due to fears of harassment from far-right conspiracy theorists and anti-immigration groups. In the last few years it has become the target of malicious lies, not unlike the debunked “Pizza-Gate” conspiracy from a few years back, falsely claiming that the center is engaging in human trafficking, exploitation of children, and smuggling immigrants across the border.

At the end of January, the center closed for three days because of fear of being targeted by those attending a “We Stand America” border security rally in the neighboring border town of McAllen, Texas. One of the headline speakers was Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a former Trump administration official and QAnon supporter. The center has decided to close until it can assess the risks and plan for reopening safely.

But this fight actually dates all the way back to 2017, when the center sued the Trump Administration for trying to build a portion of the border wall that would cut through the middle of National Butterfly Center’s land.

We spoke with the Executive Director of the National Butterfly Center, Marianna Traviño-Wright, and to learn more about how the National Butterfly Center got wrapped up in all this, we spoke with Melissa del Bosque, Co-Founder of The Border Chronicle, and who has been covering the National Butterfly Center since 2017.