Protest goes across nation
They wore white. They shook their fists in the air. They carried signs reading: ‘‘No more children in cages,’’ and ‘‘What’s next? Concentration Camps?’’
In major cities and tiny towns, hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered yesterday across America, moved by accounts of children separated from their parents at the USMexico border, in the latest act of mass resistance against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Protesters flooded more than 700 marches, from immigrantfriendly cities like New York and Los Angeles to conservative Appalachia and Wyoming. They gathered on the front lawn of a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, near a detention centre where migrant children were being held in cages, and on a street corner near Trump’s golf resort at Bedminster, New Jersey, where the president spent the weekend.
Trump has backed away from family separations amid bipartisan and international uproar. His ‘‘zero tolerance policy’’ led officials to take more than 2000 children from their parents as they tried to enter the country illegally, most of them fleeing violence, persecution or economic collapse in their home countries.
Those marching at the weekend demanded the government quickly reunite the families that were already divided.
A Brazilian mother separated from her 10-year-old son more than a month ago approached the microphone at the Boston rally.
‘‘We came to the United States seeking help, and we never imagined that this could happen. So I beg everyone, please release these children, give my son back to me,’’ she said through an interpreter, weeping.
‘‘Please fight and continue fighting, because we will win,’’ she said.
The crowd erupted. In Washington, D.C., an estimated 30,000 marchers gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House in what was expected to be the largest protest of the day, stretching for hours under a searing sun. Firefighters at one point misted the crowd to help people cool off.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the musical Hamilton, sang a lullaby dedicated to parents unable to sing to their children. Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys read a letter written by a woman whose child had been taken away from her at the border.
‘‘It’s upsetting. Families being separated, children in cages,’’ said Emilia Ramos, a cleaner in the district, fighting tears at the rally. ‘‘Seeing everyone together for this cause, it’s emotional.’’
Around her, thousands waved signs: ‘‘I care,’’ some read, referencing a jacket that first lady Melania Trump wore when travelling to visit child migrants. The back of her jacket said, ‘‘I really don’t care, do U?’’ and it became a rallying cry for protesters Saturday.
‘‘I care!! Do you?’’ read Joan Culwell’s T-shirt as she joined a rally in Denver.
‘‘We care!’’ marchers shouted outside Dallas City Hall. Organiser Michelle Wentz says opposition to the Trump administration’s ‘‘barbaric and inhumane’’ policy has seemed to transcend political lines.
The president took to Twitter amid the protests, first to show his support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as some Democrats called for major changes to the agency. Tweeting from New Jersey, Trump urged ICE agents to ‘‘not worry or lose your spirit’’ and wrote that ‘‘the radical left Dems want you out. Next it will be all police.’’
In Trump’s hometown of New York City, another massive crowd poured across the Brooklyn Bridge in sweltering 90-degree heat, some carrying their children on their shoulders, chanting, ‘‘Shame!’’ Drivers honked their horns in support.
‘‘It’s important for this administration to know that these policies that rip apart families – that treat people as less than human, like they’re vermin – are not the way of God, they are not the law of love,’’ said the Rev. Julie Hoplamazian, an Episcopal priest marching in Brooklyn.
Though seasoned anti-Trump demonstrators packed the rallies, others were new to activism, including parents who said they felt compelled to act after heartwrenching accounts of families who were torn apart.
Marchers took to city parks and downtown squares from Maine to Florida to Oregon; in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico; on the international bridge between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico; even in Antler, North Dakota, population 27. People braved the heat in Chicago and Atlanta to march.
Some of the demonstrations were boisterous, others quiet.
Five people were arrested outside an ICE office in Dallas for blocking a road. At least one arrest was made in Columbus, Ohio, when protesters obstructed a downtown street. Light-rail service temporarily shut down in Minneapolis as thousands of demonstrators got in the way of the tracks. A rally in Portland, Maine, grew so large that police had to shut down part of a major street. But in Dodge City, Kansas, a 100-person rally led by a Catholic church felt more like a mass than a protest.
In Washington, protesters ended their march at the whitecolumned Justice Department. They stacked their protest signs, written in English and Spanish, against its grand wooden doors.
‘‘Fight for families,’’ one sign demanded. –