Aug. 26 (UPI) — A man has been arrested near the White House for setting an American flag on fire shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to prosecute acts of flag “desecration.”

The Secret Service confirmed the arrest in a statement to Newsweek, stating the suspect was detained in Lafayette Park for “igniting an object” at about 6:15 p.m. EDT Monday.

The suspect was turned over to U.S. Park Police, which told NBC News that the person had violated a statute that bans fires in public parks.

In a video of the incident published on social media by The Bulwark news organization, the suspect identified himself as a 20-year combat veteran who said he was burning the flag “as a protest to that illegal fascist president that sits in that House.”

The arrest came hours after Trump signed an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to “prioritize” enforcing the nation’s criminal and civil law “against acts of American flag desecration.”

The order does not explicitly make American flag burning illegal, which the Supreme Court has ruled is protected by the Constitution, but says that burning “this representation of America may incite violence and riot.”

During the signing ceremony in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump claimed American flags are being burned “all over the country.”

He also mentioned the 5-4 Supreme Court decision of 1989 that found flag burning is a form of symbolic speech protected by the First Amendment, but seemingly disregarded it, stating people “go crazy” when a flag is burned.

“If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy. You can do other things. You can burn this piece of paper,” he said, gesturing toward a piece of paper on his desk.

“But when you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before. People go crazy in both ways. There are some that are going crazy for doing it. There are others that are angry, angry about them doing it.”

Trump signed the executive order as some 2,000 National Guardsmen have been deployed to Washington, D.C.