Activists to protest immigration policies as Sessions speaks

A coalition of civil rights, religious and union activists opposed to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies prepared to stage a protest Monday at a school-safety conference in Nevada where Attorney General Jeff Sessions was scheduled to be the keynote speaker.

Several of the protesters gathering for the rally outside a hotel-casino in Reno said they planned to engage in civil disobedience to bring attention to the separation of children and families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Nearly two dozen Nevada groups tried unsuccessfully last week to persuade the national school law enforcement group hosting the conference to withdraw its invitation to Sessions.

Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, said Sessions has important information to share as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Meanwhile, a congressman said he was turned away from trying to meet with detainees from the southern border crisis because of a chicken pox outbreak at a federal prison in Tacoma, Washington.

Democratic Rep. Derek Kilmer went to the Northwest Detention Center on Saturday after hearing that a number of migrants who were separated from their children had been transferred there from another federal prison in the area.

Kilmer told the Tacoma News Tribune that he had tours set up at both facilities but that they were cancelled due to protest-related safety concerns. When the congressman tried to visit three detainees during regularly scheduled visiting hours on Saturday, he was told that they were all quarantined due to chicken pox exposure. On Sunday, more than 30 immigrant parents separated from their children after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were freed into the care of a Texas charitable organization, the group said, but the parents don’t know where their kids are or when they might see them .