S.F. demonstration
⏩ Hundreds, including Jessica Blank, above, descend on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office downtown to protest the Trump administration’s policy of separating families of immigrants arrested at the border.
Hundreds of protesters descended on a block of San Francisco’s Financial District on Tuesday to protest the Trump administration’s policy of separating thousands of immigrant children from their parents at the border.
Demonstrators, armed with homemade signs and rallying cries, blocked the entrance to the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement field office in San Francisco around 1 p.m., choking the stretch of road on Sansome Street between Jackson and Washington and diverting traffic.
Emily Nahmanson, who left her IT job at a video game console manufacturer to attend the protest, held a sign that read, “ICE = American Gestapo” while noting parallels she sees between the Trump administration and Nazi Germany.
Nahmanson, who is Jewish, teared up as she spoke about the thought of immigrant children in cages and how much the country has changed in the 17 months since Donald Trump was sworn in as president.
“Honestly, there are people who think the Nazis were not
wrong,” she said, adding that it was time for people to get off Instagram and start paying attention to the politics around them.
In late April, the Trump administration instituted a “zero tolerance” policy that prosecutes all undocumented immigrants caught crossing the border — even those seeking asylum — and separates them from their children in the process. The policy, which was announced in early May by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has drawn condemnation from Democrats and immigration rights advocates, as well as some Republicans, who have called the separation of children from their parents cruel and inhumane.
“The world that we were afraid of turning into under Trump — we’re already there,” Nahmanson said. “So, it’s time to act how we all told ourselves we would act if we were ever in a fascist situation.”
Statistics released late last week fanned the flames, when Department of Homeland Security officials announced that federal officials had separated nearly 2,000 children from their parents during a six-week span from the end of April through early June.
Unlike other protests, which often include marches or “die-ins” where attendees lie in the streets, Tuesday’s demonstration entailed protesters simply facing the building, pumping their signs and chanting in unison. The chants would last about a minute before another caught hold, each rising a few decibels when someone walked out the front door.
Throughout the after and noon, demonstrators demanded, “Stop taking children,” “deport ICE” and “shut it down.”
Some of the later rallying cries broadened the protest, at one point decrying private prisons, the majority of people dispersed after an hour.
Aaron Sarazan, who is part of a two-person early startup, left work to attend and held a twoperson “resist” sign along with his company’s co-founder.
Sarazan said the onslaught of information and images on social media about children being isolated in detention centers prompted him to attend.
“It’s kind of been miserable reading about it every waking second,” Sarazan said. “And it’s all awful.”
In the past few days, lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the aisle have called on Trump to put an end to the policy.
Trump has falsely claimed that the policy was created by Democrats and his administration is simply following the law. However, there is no such law that requires children being separated from their families.