Border agents seized hundreds of monarch butterflies along the Texas border this week as the iconic orange-and-black insects made their way north from their Mexican overwintering sites on their annual spring migration.

The butterfly round-up is part of  President Donald Trump’s “mass deportations” policy to address immigrants illegally entering the U.S. via the Mexican border.

“They captured me, made me put my wings up, and wouldn’t let me explain that I’m from here,” a butterfly tagged AGPC013  explained. “If they’d just look into it, they’d see I was born in Dallas and tagged on the Llano River last fall,” the male monarch said.

Monarch migration map

Monarchs must cross the Texas border during their spring migration north from Mexico and fall migration south from Canada.  –Map by Texas Butterfly Ranch

Troopers with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) encountered the migrants among two large groups. The first batch of 230 illegal butterfly immigrants was apprehended on March 28.

Butterflies born in the U.S. and already settled here were also part of the seizure, a result of the Trump administration’s new birth-is-not-citizenship policy.

The seizure was executed by federal agents armed with butterfly nets and metal cages on wheels. Among that group: 27 monarchs from Michoacán, and dozens more from Jalisco, Guanajuato, Zacatecas and Durango, according to a statement issued by the DPS.

Several detainees explained they were enroute from their ancestral roosting sites in the mountains west of Mexico City to “launch the next generation of monarchs.” All were turned over to federal authorities.

“We’re just enforcing the law,” said Miguel Hernandez, a border patrol agent who had just netted 10 captives nectaring on Straggler daisy blossoms near the National Butterfly Center at Mission in the Rio Grande Valley. The Butterfly Center is located just a half-mile from the Texas-Mexico border.

Border patrol agent guards detained monarch butterflies awaiting transport. –Photo by Misha Kahn

The butterflies in question have been accused of stealing jobs and resources from native butterflies and other wildlife. They lay their eggs on milkweed plants that hatch and consume the plant’s foliage, decimating some milkweeds, leaving little to the “native flyers,” proponents of the policy claim.

Some of the male monarchs are said to belong to “insect gangs” according to Border Patrol sources, who said existence of the gangs was unknown until the election of President Trump.

Those who oppose the policy point out that monarch butterflies–which migrate over multiple generations from Mexico through the U.S. and Canada and back each year–actually contribute to the health of the ecosystem by providing free ecosystem services like facilitating plant reproduction by pollinating plants.

“They don’t even get paid,” said Samuel Black of the Insect Protection Society, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, devoted to invertebrate conservation.

One female butterfly that survived the journey to Mexico from Texas and was making her return north shared with reporters that she was illegally seized and tagged in the Texas Hill Country last fall.

“I was flying south, minding my own business when someone with a butterfly net snagged me, manhandled me, and put a sticker on my wing that I had to carry all the way to Mexico,” said the butterfly, who chose to remain nameless. “I was born in Texas!”

The butterfly added that the sticker–known as a tag in citizen science circles–fell off at some point on a rainy day in the forest at El Chincua sanctuary in Michoacán.

Two butterflies caught in the act of copulation on a Mountain Laurel tree near the border were also seized. The female was able to avert the net momentarily and laid an egg on a nearby Antelope horns milkweed plant that was sprouting on the Texas side of the border.

Whether or not the butterfly that hatches from that egg will be considered a native Texan or be deported remains to be seen, given President Trump’s recent bid to end birthright citizenship, which has been guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution since the end of the Civil War.

The butterflies will be held about 50 miles southeast of San Antonio at the Karnes County Detention Facility, a South Texas immigration detention center that has recently been repurposed by the new administration.

TOP PHOTO: Border patrol agent seizes monarch butterflies along the Texas-Mexico border.–Photo by Misha Khan

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