McAllen, Texas — Thousands of patriots from across Texas and beyond were set to converge on the border town of McAllen, Texas, in late January to hear from some of America’s most prominent patriot leaders. The goal: shine a light on the escalating existential crisis developing on the U.S.-Mexico border. But an hour after the We Stand America event was supposed to start, it was clear something was really not right.
The speakers were all there right on time. Conservative “superstars” such as Lt. General Michael Flynn, former national security advisor to President Donald Trump and retired chief of military intelligence; conservative rock star Ted Nugent; Colonel Allen West, former congressman and Texas GOP chief; libertarian business magnate and Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne; former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief Tom Hohman; former Customs and Border Protection head Mark Morgan; celebrity actress and author Sam Sorbo; Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem; many sheriffs and lawmen; and leading conservative media personalities.
Numerous national media outlets showed up, too, ranging from left-wing propaganda outlets to top conservative outlets with massive followings. Volunteers were there bright and early, ready to direct the traffic and the masses of people expected to be crowding into the stadium. But almost nobody came. By the time it was all said and done, less than 200 audience members showed up rather than the thousands expected.
It was not because the event was not well advertised. It was, despite the frantic “shadowbanning” by Big Tech companies. In fact, organizers told The New American magazine that they had tracked over 100,000 visitors on the websites to buy tickets, even as the sites — both Ticketmaster and Eventbrite — continually crashed. Eventually, attacks on the websites were traced back to Pakistan, organizers said. Bad-faith actors also stole over 600 free tickets set aside for veterans, police, and border agents before organizers shut down the scheme.
Despite the relentless attacks, well over 1,000 general-admission tickets had been sold before the event, and many more were expected to buy at the door, organizers said. But for reasons that have not been properly explained, Ticketmaster refunded everybody’s money and told ticket holders that the event had been canceled. That was news to the organizers, of course. Local media outlets and radio stations also broadcast the false claim that the event was canceled. Ticketmaster did not respond to a request for comment.
“Unfortunately, our event came under relentless and unprecedented attacks from the moment we announced it,” organizer Christie Hutcherson with Women Fighting For America told The New American magazine. “The Payne arena’s vendor Ticketmaster posted our event was cancelled and refused to pull it down, the Payne arena would not advertise it like they normally do with other events, and the Hidalgo City Manager called Eric, the manager of the arena, and said the event was cancelled, that he didn’t want a Trump event in his town.”
While the Payne Arena, where the event was held, did allow Saturday’s events to proceed, they denied the group access to the premises for Sunday’s portion of the conference. Even more catastrophic for the organizers, broadcasters who had hoped to livestream the event and important speeches worldwide found out after arriving at the arena that the internet was not working. Organizers said it was obvious that there was a coordinated effort from the start to ensure that Americans did not find out about what was going on at the event or the border.
Before the event began, numerous bizarre occurrences spooked organizers and even speakers. The day prior, for example, there was an incident at the border when some of the key team members of the event went down to get footage of people crossing illegally. According to Heather Hobbs, a John Birch Society coordinator who helped organize the event, a woman from the “Water Department” showed up, took pictures of them, and claimed nobody was allowed to film there.
That incident was reported to the sheriff as a criminal complaint and is now being investigated, Hobbs told The New American. An unnamed U.S. Border Patrol agent told the magazine on condition of anonymity that “Water Department” officials have previously been arrested for transporting illegal immigrants in official vehicles. Hobbs wondered whether there may be more to the story than just a naïve bureaucrat.
Separately, rumors were spread by local political operatives that the We Stand America event was some sort of security threat. Indeed, the leftist-controlled National Butterfly Center on the U.S.-Mexico border, which fought the border wall and has been raising suspicions among border-security advocates for years over its alleged role in facilitating illegal border crossing, put out a statement announcing that it was closing for the weekend due to supposed concerns over the safety of its staff.
“’Credible threats’ connected to Mike Flynn rally shut down National Butterfly Center,” blared a headline from the fringe far-left website Raw Story, parroting outlandish claims from leaders of the Butterfly Center. The Butterfly Center itself put out a statement saying the We Stand America event organized by “Trump operatives” would be similar to one organized by Steve Bannon and others “that likely incited the Wal-mart Massacre in El Paso.”
Of course, the accusation was self-evidently ludicrous. But left-wing propaganda organs hyped it. And by the time the first day of the event was over, the establishment media had painted the event as an alleged security threat that law enforcement was supposedly “monitoring.” No mention was made in key media reports about the fact that attendees and speakers in many cases were lawmen themselves or even top-level former federal officials who barely a year earlier were running huge security agencies. In fact, from the news coverage, it would have been easy to assume it was a tiny KKK rally.
For reasons that have not been adequately explained, the National Butterfly Center has since announced that it will be shutting down permanently. The leader, Marianna Treviño-Wright, has been telling every left-wing media outlet that will listen that she supposedly lives in perpetual fear of “stochastic terrorism” from conservatives who believe “lies” about illegal border crossings, sex trafficking, and other alleged criminal activity taking place at the preserve.
Ironically, the sliming of Hutcherson and others associated with the event has been far more vicious than anything conservatives allegedly said or did. Hutcherson, the main organizer, has been the subject of relentless personal attacks. Despite no evidence to back up the claims, far-left activists and their allies in the establishment media have repeatedly smeared her as a supporter of “Q-Anon,” a “religious zealot,” and even a “white supremacist.” Hutcherson also slammed the false accusation made against her organization regarding alleged threats to the Butterfly Center.
But according to We Stand America organizers, the goal of the event was simply to show Americans what is happening on the border under the Biden administration. “The intention of our event in McAllen was to illuminate the atrocities committed every single minute along the America/Mexico border,” said Hutcherson. “We wanted to bring to the attention of the American populace how we the people can step in and take control where our ‘governmental leaders’ have failed us so terribly and where they continue to break the laws of the United States.”
“The event focused on domestic security, human trafficking, drug trafficking and the impact it is having on our communities as well as the humanitarian crisis this administration’s policies have created,” she continued. “Our weekend ended with a prayer march to the wall to pray over our nation and to lock arms in solidarity to say, ‘No more not on our watch’!”
In fact, Hutcherson and others involved with the event believe that part of the reason for the unprecedented sabotage against the events was that it would shed light on what was going on. “It was very clear our event was threatening Cartel activity to include human trafficking and drug trafficking,” she said. More than a few sources also told The New American that although McAllen looks like any American city, Mexican drug cartels are powerful players in the town’s business and government sectors.
The entire weekend was an eye-opening experience. The day before the event took place, during a border tour for VIP participants and speakers, the team witnessed illegal border crossings over the river on a rubber raft. The illegal crossers “mooned” the bus on the U.S. side of the border before the U.S. Border Patrol’s helicopter showed up.
At the event itself, speakers offered tremendous insight into what is going on. U.S. Border Patrol veteran of 28 years Frank Lopez, who is now running for Congress, explained to The New American that the Biden administration has taken over a military runway near the border and is now packing 737s full of illegal immigrants and then flying them to various destinations across the nation. Buses are being used for that purpose as well.
Perhaps even more alarming is the fact that there is now a backlog estimated at over three years, allowing illegal migrants to live and work in the United States for years before their scheduled court date. Most never show up for the hearings, experts say. And eventually, as soon as they are able to do so politically, Democrats plan to provide blanket “amnesty” to illegal immigrants in the United States to get them on to a “pathway to citizenship” and voting.
The Biden administration has deliberately “destroyed” the border after inheriting the most secure border in U.S. history, former Customs and Border Protection chief Mark Morgan told The New American from the event. Morgan and former head of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tom Homan, who together served under six administrations, said it was critical to understand why some three to four million illegal border crossings have been facilitated by the administration’s policies over the last year.
One obvious reason is that illegal aliens are counted in the census, giving Democrats more clout in Congress and elections. Eventually, the Democrats hope to get those illegal aliens amnesty so they can vote. “This is about politics, and it’s disgusting,” said Morgan. All of this is helping cartels, human traffickers, terrorists, and other threats, too, and is jeopardizing America’s national security in a major way. Morgan said states and Congress must take action to deal with this crisis. “We can’t wait for 2022,” he said, praising Texas officials for working to protect the border and calling on other states to get involved now.
Another expert on this subject who spoke to The New American at the event, immigration and border attorney Dale Wilcox with the Immigration Reform Law Institute, said that the month prior to the event had seen nearly 200,000 apprehensions at the border. “It is a crisis,” he said, adding that there were over two million during all of 2021. Wilcox and his organization, which are serving as outside counsel to various states in their federal lawsuits against the Biden administration’s lawless policies, are working to get federal laws enforced. He urged citizens to get involved, too.
Numerous speakers and experts at the event emphasized the national security implications, too. The human and sex trafficking, the terrorists coming over, the cartel drug-running, and the massive influx of future Democratic voters were all highlighted as key concerns. More than a few leading figures described it as an “invasion” being engineered and aided by the Biden administration for the purpose of destroying America.
General Michael Flynn, for instance, told The New American that the ongoing “invasion” of the United States from illegal immigrants representing over 150 nations was literally an existential threat to America’s survival. Colonel Allen West, meanwhile, who is running for Texas governor after having served in Congress and as leader of the Texas GOP, warned that states must tackle the crisis before it is too late, adding that “every state is now a border state.”
It was obvious to everyone involved that the Biden administration, the drug cartels, and the radical left all had an incentive to sabotage the historic event. But numerous organizers, citing information from their IT and security teams, also suggested the Bush dynasty may have been involved, pointing to multiple connections between the prominent political family and lower-level operatives allegedly involved in the sabotage efforts.
In the end, despite the unprecedented attacks, the organizers decided to proceed anyway. By the time the event was over, they had lost over $130,000, in addition to the revenue they would have received from a packed arena. But Women Fighting for America is determined to stay the course, and is more motivated than ever amid the onslaught of false allegations and “ridiculous threats,” founder Hutcherson told The New American magazine.
“We will continue to expose and speak truth. The American people deserve nothing less,” she said. “We will not sit by while those that seek to fundamentally transform America into a socialist communist society demean and destroy our traditional family values nor destroy the fabric of our Constitution.”
That cartels, government officials, fake-news purveyors, and Big Tech companies were able to shut down and silence this event so effectively should terrify Americans of all political persuasions and freedom lovers everywhere. If these internationally known advocates of freedom who in many cases have served at the highest levels of government in recent years can be demonized, silenced, and shut down like this, nobody is safe.
