It Could Happen Here - How A Butterfly Sanctuary Became The Center of a Border War, Part 2

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

James and Robert continue their exploration of the war between Qanon and the Butterfly Sanctuary.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy

Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or whenever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead,

now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. A few weeks after Colfegi's tweet, the Butterfly Centre closed its rusty gate. It reopened in late April of 2022, but the almost three months in between were a harrowing experience for Mariana and for the staff when we arrived at the centre in early March. There was a police surveillance tower posted in the car park, and young men in Humvees on the road we traveled down to get there. Despite them, or perhaps in a sense because of them, and the theater they represent, Mariana doesn't feel safe. She carries a gun on her property.

Even without the wall, the militarization of the border has had a huge impact on the center. If you walk down to the river, she shows us some of the roads and access routes that have been built. Concrete goes here in the base of the levee, or midway in the levee. And they have to fill the gap to make this road up here wide enough for two to three vehicles. And then down here, they'll have a high-speed, all-weather road.

So we fully expect there's border wall, and then there's border wall system. The road, the lighting, the sensors, those sorts of things are part of the system. And we fully expect that all the seats are around to clear and alter this for system. sees our land, clear and alter this war system. Otherwise, they come down this high-speed, all-weather road, have to slow down, go up, and drive along the canal. And we know the number one killer of Border Patrol agents is motor vehicle accidents. As we walk along one of the roads, we talk about the impact the wall has had on wildlife.

I tell her a story about a deer I saw try to get around the wall into a pond. For whatever reason, it was so desperately sad that I can't forget it. The devastation the border wreaks on human life tends to get the most press, and rightfully so. But Mariana has spent years watching the wall spread like a cancer over the ecosystem she loves. The addition of herbicide to keep the enforcement zone dead and free of any vegetation. It has to do with the installation of all-night bright lighting that disrupts mammals. It disrupts mammals. And of course, the wall, when it eliminates range area, when it forms that barrier for land mammals and reptiles, you eliminate genetic diversity from breeding. You eliminate seed distribution, all kinds of other things. So no, there's no way to build a wall like that without investing in water.

Especially here where they're building it in the lower Rio Grande Valley Wildlife Conservation Corps. Of course, the human cost is even higher. Mariana first became aware of exactly what was at stake when she, like millions of other people, opened up her phone and learned about the most recent in a string of hate crimes inspired by anti-immigrant rhetoric. A very disturbed young man drove from Plano to the Walmart in El Paso and massacred 22 people and injured dozens others. we were very much aware of that and believe that is ultimately what We Build the Wall seeks to provoke here. The shooter, who openly targeted Mexicans and believed in the Great Replacement Theory, which is common among white nationalists, had posted a manifesto on 8chan before he started his killing spree. In that manifesto, he complained of a Hispanic invasion

and used rhetoric that mirrored that of Colfage and his fundraising collaborator, Steve Bannon. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know it. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series,

Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions

will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions sponsored by Gilead now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

2019 was the year the 8chan shootings dominated news coverage on extremism. I found myself as the world media's go-to guy for explaining what had happened. The hardest thing to get across was how much of the hate that had ended in dozens of murders had started with shitposting, people spreading racist memes and hateful jokes within the confines of a digital echo chamber. For Mariana, the El Paso shooting was a wake-up call, hard evidence that online bullshit can turn into deadly violence. The longer she spent online reading far-right conversations, the more she realized Kofage's baseless allegations might mean real danger for her and her colleagues. After we filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security and there was publicity about that, and honestly the timing of that was kind of good because we filed suit at the beginning of December. So by the time media picked up on it, people were really already distracted by Christmas.

You know, they were holiday planning and partying and shopping and all that. So there wasn't this enormous explosion of publicity and negative backlash. But we did start getting what we called disaster tourists. But we did start getting what we called disaster tourists, people who would show up going, we heard they're going to build the wall across the Butterfly Center. Show us where they're going to build our president's big, beautiful wall. And as long as they behaved, you know, we have maps. We would take their entry fee and say, OK, now you got to walk a quarter mile that way to the canal.

That's where they're going to build it. And then walk another 1.2 miles to the border, to the actual border. And again, it gave us a chance to educate people. And there was a lot of head scratching with people going, but why would they build the wall? Things seemed to be going well, but then they took a turn for the worst. Kolfage had tweeted that, quote, the only butterflies we saw were swarming a decomposing body surrounded by tons of rotting trash left behind by illegals, and his lies had become something of a fixture on the

places where MAGA and QAnon overlap. Almost none of these people had ever visited the border, but years of propaganda had given them a fixed set of expectations about this place. But years of propaganda had given them a fixed set of expectations about this place. They spun up ever more ridiculous fantasies and, by late 2019, over. And they had all kinds of weapons and munitions and grenades and, you know, improvised explosive devices and everything in the car. And they said they were headed to the border. Then the militia people started coming here. people started coming here and um i was here the day the first ones came the first that we know of came inside the building to case the joint and sometimes i sit here at the conference table to work sometimes i'm in this office right here but I can always hear what's going on at the front

counter. And we have a door chime. And so there are questions that people ask when they're first time visitors. There are questions people ask when they're part of our tribe, when they're naturalists, when they've come for the butterflies and the birds and all of that and then there are questions people ask that make all of your spidey senses you know go off and I heard that kind of questioning and whenever that happens I get my phone open to camera and I go out there what the question you heard was that kind of triggered you a bit they were asking about the lay of the land and how they would get to the river from here and those aren't regular questions when most people show up they're like we're here on family vacation and on our way to South Padre but we heard there was a butterfly

center so we stopped to you know so they may say like where are the butterflies people show up thinking we're a butterfly house and you know but when people immediately say like how do I get to the river from here or explain to me where the access points are. You're kind of like, okay, no. And I took a picture of them from behind. And then I went out there, and I was like, you know, hello, gentlemen. Can I help you? And make sure they, you know. It's like we are looking you in the face.

We can identify you. And one of them kind of turned and walked off. And one of them stayed to talk to me. And they were like, well, we've just, you know, never been here before. And tell us what y'all are all about. And it was the week of Thanksgiving. And we'd actually just had our potluck for staff and some of our members. So they're like, and you've got food.

And they're like, can we have some pecan pie? Sure, have a slice of pie but the other guy who had peeled off I noticed him walking around he came and looked back here he was noticing the cameras and all the places he he made his way toward the back of the building and started the same thing and I was like, and I told Luciano, go outside, photograph all the vehicles in the parking lot, you know, get license plates, get all the identifying information that we would need. And sure enough, there were two trucks backed in with the Punisher stickers and the 13 stars in a circle and the, you know, the don't tread on me and this and that one of them was from

New Mexico and I believe the other one was from I want to say like Oregon or somewhere but it was yeah I mean it was yeah I've still got all that information and then I uh so after they left we downloaded the security camera video and put our photos and everything together. And I emailed everything to the commander for DPS down here, as well as the mission police chief, and then asked to meet with them. And, of course, the mission PD guys had no idea about the Atomwaffen people being arrested in Texas. They had no idea the militia was in town. And then more and more of them kept coming. And one of them would drive up and down Sherbach in his huge jacked up truck. It was a red truck with the Trump flags and he had two big great Danes

that, you know, he would just be loud and annoying. He wanted everybody to know he was here on patrol and ready to intimidate. That was disconcerting, but the police responded. They wound up having several interactions with various militia people and even taking at least two of them that we know of into custody. And at least one of those was turned over to the FBI. The man arrested had outstanding warrants and had been flying a drone in a controlled airspace. Another had been impersonating a law enforcement officer. Seeing the threat, Mariana realized that if she wanted to stay safe, she was going to have to take matters into her own hands.

We don't know if it was done here or somewhere else. I assume it was not here because they didn't tell us it was here. Oh, no. The mission PD officer who is their liaison with the FBI came and met with me and thanked me for sharing all of that information. I mean, we knew what hotel they were staying at. And we've had to become our own sort of security and detective force because nobody else is doing it. protective force because nobody else is doing it. And I think most people in communities around the country think the police know what's going on and they're out there, you know, safeguarding us when we have learned the hard way that that is absolutely not true.

Soon, she was plumbing the parts of the internet that she'd only heard mentioned on passing in the news. We were aware of Pizzagate. Yeah. Yeah, we were aware that they had declared that Hillary Clinton and associates were running a satanic child, you know, sex ring with, you know, ritual sacrifice and all kinds of other preposterous stuff out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor, you know, where the pizza parlor didn't even have a basement, much less a satanic ritual child sex trafficking ring. Just a few weeks after the shooting in El Paso, We Build the Wall broke ground on their Phase 2 project. Within sight and very much within shooting distance

of the National Butterfly Center, Mayor Arnon was under no illusion about the stakes. They know that they have the ability to incite violence in that way, to motivate people to take action, and they use a lot of really inflammatory rhetoric. And they use a lot of really inflammatory rhetoric. Even Steve Bannon's broadcast is called the war room. You know, we're all at war.

We're at war against the cartels and we're at war for the soul of our nation. And we're at war against the Democrats. And, you know, and now they're at war against the Butterfly Center. In addition to her intelligence gathering, she started taking steps to protect herself and her workers. They weren't exactly the sort of things she'd expected when she took a job where she'd hoped to write grants and talk to kids about butterflies. We had to develop some very rudimentary safety plans like if there were a shooting where you would shelter how we would try to safeguard visitors and other things to like the women on staff even the guys on staff like I never have my hair down I always keep it up or under a hat or something

because you just learn in basic self-defense that somebody's going to grab your ponytail or your hair as the fastest, easiest way to take control of your whole body, basically. So we just, we all take a variety of precautions and it has radically changed the way we we operate here and the way we perceive this place which used to be I mean we were blissful idiots coming to work in this oasis of of flowers and and butterflies every day. And, you know, my children described me as snow white, that I'm out there just with the butterflies landing on me and the hummingbirds coming up and saying hello. Luckily, she wasn't alone. As soon as people heard about the threats to her in the center, she began to receive messages of support. It turns out it's not only right-wing grifters who can summon people to a remote part of southern Texas where the Rio Grande twists through the reeds,

and locals switch to English and Spanish as the mood suits them. Groups from across the country, from veterans to indigenous nations, reached out to offer support. So first we had the water protectors and indigenous peoples like the Cariço Comecrudo and Navajo and other nations people came here and set up camp. They were good being here night and day to be our eyes and ears and a deterrent for the militia entering the property. And along with them came others like the Sierra Club Military Outdoors Program participants who also camped And we had the Brown Berets and Veterans for Peace and even folks from the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. I mean, I hate to even include that since we get called pinko, commie, libtard, snowflakes and all of that. But those folks showed up willing to help in the face of fascism, in the face of these militia. But all this stress and the need for constant patrols

and vigilance took its toll. Even with support, being the center of a fabricated firestorm of lies is no fun. It wasn't just Mariana who was impacted. The constant stress and the non-stop overflights of the Border Patrol helicopters impacted her staff as well. And then in 2019, like all bets are off. Anybody can say anything they want. They can, you know, I hate to say it, but people get mental health days now if they pay.

If they just, for whatever reason, are like, I can't deal with this shit today, they don't have to come to work. And I've lost good employees. In 2020, briefly, We Build the Wall won an injunction and kept building their privately funded wall. Massive erosion quickly undermined it, but the International Boundary and Water Commission report on the construction wasn't completed until March, by which time We Build the Wall had completed three miles of wall. The consensus among hydrologists and engineers interviewed by ProPublica for a report on the wall said that the Rio Grande had scoured against

the base of the wall, causing erosion and putting the wall in danger of collapse. With its very shallow foundation, Kohlfaser's wall was in immediate danger of toppling into the river. In response to this, Trump did what Trump does and took to Twitter to blame everyone else. In July of 2020, he tweeted, I disagreed with doing this very small, tiny section of the wall, going on to say, it was only done to make me look bad, and perhaps it now doesn't even work. Should have been built like rest of wall, 500 plus miles. I should also note that he misspelled perhaps in that tweet. While Colfage was still reeling from this condemnation, the acting U.S. attorney for

the Southern District of New York announced indictments of Colfage and Bannon for wire fraud. The charging documents themselves are an unusually compelling read. We did a couple of episodes of Behind the Bastards covering them. The whole situation would be much funnier, though, if it weren't for all of the lives that Colfage and his cronies directly threatened. Anyway, it turned out they had been taking huge sums for their own personal use while concealing their use of funds that donors thought would be spent on the wall by creating, quote, sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows Presented by iHeart and Sonora An anthology of modern day horror stories Inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom and refuge between the chapters. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Initially, all four entered not guilty pleas. They seemed to be buying time, hoping that Trump would pardon them. In the end, he did pardon Steve Bannon, and you can make of that what you will.

But the others were left to hang in the wind. This April, Kolfage entered a guilty plea to these and other charges. The failure of Bannon and Kolfage's grift didn't stop them from using the Butterfly Sanctuary as a punching bag in their fundraising rants that they published to whatever sites had not gotten around to banning them yet. As right-wing radicals were deplatformed from Facebook and Twitter in the lead-up to the 2020 election, Mariana stopped getting tagged in their rants. But they didn't stop ranting. Soon, as it became clear that Trump had lost the election and refused to concede it, he began to lie about the election and then attempted to overturn it by encouraging his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol.

At this point, it became clearer that the same people who were fanatical about building the wall had also become entirely detached from reality. Even after Biden had been inaugurated and their lie had failed, a who's who, or perhaps a who's not in jail for sedition yet, of MAGA grifters continued to focus their rage at the QAnon-adjacent fantasies they'd concocted about unspecified cartels smuggling children across a butterfly sanctuary to sexually abuse them. Sometimes, they claimed, they cut the heads off of children so that the corpses were easier to transport. It's the kind of habitual, unhinged escalation that liberals and lefties on Twitter love to consume, mockingly, via aggregator accounts that enable mass gawking at the far right. But for Mariana, it was not at all amusing.

Like, I didn't even know Rumble existed. I didn't know what Rumble was. And then we were sent the video that Christy Hutcherson and Lindsay something from South, made here in front of the Butterfly Center. And, you know, of course, there's the Ben Berkman stuff. And, you know, we don't watch War Room, but sometimes I do have to go find and film portions of those broadcasts where Steve Bannon is still bashing us and using that platform to bolster the lies and really stir up the terrible sentiment and ultimately, we fear the stochastic terrorism. Let's stop for a second and go into more detail about the people she's referencing here. Christy Hutcherson founded a group called Women Fighting for America. On their website's About page, they note, today, Americans' closely held beliefs in freedom seem to be under constant

attack from mainstream media, elitist academia, judicial activists, foreign aggressors, and many times elected politicians. These attacks highlight the two extremely different ideologies fighting for our country's future. Will we stand by and let America become a socialist, Marxist, or communist nation and give our children up to this hopeless vision? I should also note that Women Fighting for America actively solicits donations, which they note are not tax-deductible. Hutchison incited rioters during the January 6th insurrection, and is generally what you might call a B-list MAGA star. Ben Berquam is a correspondent for Real America Voice, the network that hosts Steve Bannon's War Room podcasts.

In general, the folks most focused on harassing the Butterfly Sanctuary are a lower grade of MAGA influencer than the major national names, but they all have connections higher up to those big names. And when they do land a successful line of propaganda, it tends to filter up quite efficiently to those bigger names. In January of 2022, a year after the failed coup at the Capitol, some of these MAGA holdouts came to the Rio Grande Valley to pick on a target they thought they might have a better chance of taking. The We Stand America border security rally was headlined by the few remaining QAnon conspiracy

theorists and supporters of former President Trump who had not gotten in trouble for the Capitol stuff. In part, like the entire phenomenon, the conference was a giant grift. But for many of the people taken up with its religious proclamations and wild lies of child trafficking and sexual abuse, it was the last chance they felt they had to stop something evil. Mariana, up until that time, hadn't been aware of how serious the threats against her sanctuary were. Then, a friend involved in local Republican politics reached out and told her, be armed at all times or out of town. Ahead of the rally, Ben Berquam appeared in a video on Gitter outside of the sanctuary, holding a pair of children's shoes, which he claimed were evidence of town. Ahead of the rally, Ben Berquam appeared in a video on Gitter outside of the sanctuary, holding a pair of children's shoes, which he claimed were evidence of trafficking,

and stated that he and the Butterfly Center were calling on Joe Biden to shut down the border. We're down here. We're actually heading down to Benson State Park to look at the end of the wall where Joe Biden stopped building the wall. And this place, the Butterfly Center, they said they were afraid they had some credible threats that something was going to go on. So we came down here and we want to join our voices with the Butterfly Center and say we stand against the credible threats of the cartels trafficking children through the Butterfly Center. And we demand, we call on Joe Biden to close this border down to protect the butterflies, because we all care about butterflies.

I mean, you know, the children that are being sold, these shoes were from one of the children that was trafficked across. This wristband was from one of the children that was trafficked across, smaller than my four-year-old daughter's arm. But what really matters to the Democrats are the butterflies. And so we unite with them. If that's what it's going to take to shut this border down, we unite with them and say, protect the butterflies, Joe. Close down the border. Because we know you don't care about the kids. In their horrifically overexposed video, they suggested that NBC was, quote, more concerned about butterflies than the little children, and that the Butterfly Center was used as a route for the sex trafficking of children.

Together, the video's title said, they would save America. Hey everyone, this is Lindsay Piper Loomis. I'm here with my bestie, Christy Hutcherson, and founder of Women Fighting for America. I went to the border with her last year for six days. We are here at the Butterfly Center. Look at the credible threat. They said there's going to be a big protest here. There's no protest. They're protesting what? Tell them about this. Butterflies. Tell them why. Like, what was the big deal? I'm not really sure, but I got news. I've been hit by every single tabloid there is that there's some kind of credible threat with butterflies here in Mission, Texas,

from We Stand America and Women Fighting for America. I can tell you, Women Fighting for America loves butterflies, and we care about butterflies very much. So I wanted to come down here and see what the credible threat was. And if we have to protect the butterflies, we need to protect the butterflies. I agree with that. So, Biden, why don't you build the wall to protect the butterflies? Yeah.

It's really that simple. But my question to this administration and to the National Butterfly Museum here, why are you more concerned? Why are you more concerned about butterflies than you are than the little children who are being trafficked right behind this center. And they use the butterfly land to come up through and bring these children who are trafficked and these women who are trafficked. You know, Tom Homan yesterday was speaking on stage and was telling one of the stories where he's seen a little child where he had to rescue. And that one child had over 22 different people's DNA inside of them. That's disgusting. Yeah. So as much as I care about butterflies, I can tell you this, Lindsay, I care a lot more about our children and the children who are coming

up and being exploited from the different countries by the cartels. That's what I care about. So I've been telling you guys about how children are tattooed according to how they're going to be trafficked or sold into what type of trafficking, organ harvesting, sex drug and human trafficking, how they use their body. They kill them. They use their body cavities to haul drugs across the border until the bodies start decaying. They find the bodies decapitated.

Told you about the rape trees. But here we actually have a shoe from, and this, actually, this is. This is what, so, Lindsay, this is a little bracelet, and there's a little how much money it costs for this person to be brought aside to America from the cartels. The other thing is, is that the cartels, when they're getting ready to move children, they call them tickets. So they have no regard for life. They don't care. They'll throw them in the river.

They'll leave them in the desert to die. And they call them tickets. That's how disgusting this whole thing is. And America needs to wake up and understand we are at a war with the cartels. We are at a war to save our children. So thank you so much. Yeah, and every state's a border state. And South Carolina is ranked one of the top in the nation for trafficking.

Lindsay Piper Loomis with Christy Hutcherson. Together we're saving America. God bless. But this time, they didn't stop with posting. America. God bless. But this time, they didn't stop with posting. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida.

And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related

to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.