Protest for families 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 US-Mexico border, in the latest act of mass resistance against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Protesters flooded more than 700 marches, from immigrant-friendly 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.
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 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.
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.
Though seasoned anti-Trump demonstrators packed the rallies, others were new to activism, including parents who said they felt compelled to act after heart-wrenching 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. –