The three-day long fundraising rally billed by the We Stand America organization as a “take action tour” to discuss border security and “election integrity from a Biblical worldview” drew to a close Sunday with a visit to the border wall, where attendees — some of them armed with long guns — sang “Amazing Grace.”
Around 125 people gathered for the caravan to the wall near Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, which loomed above them in a brief moment of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day.
The group snaked their way up the uneven dirt singing “Amazing Grace” before listening to remarks by event organizer, Christie Hutcherson.
Numerous attempts to reach out to local Border Patrol officials to ask if they were aware of the gathering that took place at the foot of the wall went unanswered Sunday.
The weekend-long event was a who’s who of far right figures, including many former high-ranking Republican officials.
Among the list of guest speakers were some of former President Donald Trump’s closest advisers, including former National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, former Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan, and former ICE Director Tom Homan.
Despite the attendance of many notable Republicans, a local GOP representative denied that the weekend long event was party affiliated.
Attendees wishing to hear Flynn speak at a Friday night reception had to fork over $2,500 per person, according to the We Stand America website.
The VIP ticket also came with access to a daylong affair at the Payne Arena in Hidalgo, as well as a charter bus tour of the border with Flynn, Homan and Hutcherson.
Hutcherson, founder of Women Fighting For America, organized the three-day rally, and touted it as an event that would “expose the corruption” of human trafficking along the border.
“We are going to show you what’s going on with the human trafficking. The children who are being kidnapped and sold into slavery. … Those are the lucky ones, by the way,” Hutcherson said during a video posted to Facebook Live.
“The ones that aren’t so lucky (are) the children who are being kidnapped and they’re marked for their organ harvesting. We have warehouses in Mexico that take children, kill them, and take their organs and they sell them to the Chinese or to the black market in America,” she added.
To date, federal officials have never made a claim that migrant children are being trafficked for their organs.
Moreover, organ donation within the United States is tightly regulated by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) via a process that considers a series of medical variables, according to the UNOS website.
“While many factors are used to match organs with patients, only medical and logistical factors are taken into consideration for all organs. Personal or social characteristics such as celebrity status or income do not play a role in transplant priority,” the website stated.
While Hutcherson railed against injustices being perpetrated on migrant children at the border, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks hate groups and extremism within the United States, refers to her as a “far-right religious zealot” whose interactions with migrants are less than altruistic.
Instead, the SPLC refers to her organization, Women Fighting For America, as a vigilante group that has been associated with confiscating cellphones from migrants.
Another key figure present during the weekend long event was Mike Finchem, an Arizona state representative with ties to QAnon who, like Hutcherson, traveled to Washington D.C. last January to protest the confirmation of the electoral ballot count declaring Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
Meanwhile, after posting a Facebook Live video claiming that Hutcherson and Finchem had “canceled” her VIP access to the event, a Virginia congressional candidate nonetheless attended Sunday’s vehicular caravan to the border wall.
Kimberly Lowe, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the 9th Congressional District of Virginia, claims the event revoked her priority access because they believed “a left wing, left news hit pieces done on me to defame and slander me without any discussion,” she said during a Facebook Live video Friday.
Lowe allegedly assaulted Marianna Treviño Wright, the executive director of the National Butterfly Center in Mission, a week before the We Stand America rally was set to take place.
Between the alleged assault, and a warning from a local Republican official that she and the center may be in danger as a result of the We Stand America rally, Treviño Wright and the butterfly center staff chose to close their doors this weekend.
It’s expected to reopen Monday.
