Marchers rip Trump’s immigration policies

WASHINGTON — 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, marchers gathered across America, moved by accounts of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-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 Los Angeles and New York to conservative Appalachia and Wyoming. They gathered on the front lawn of a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, near a detention center where migrant

children were being held in cages, and on a street corner near Trump’s golf resort at Bedminster, N.J., where the president is spending the weekend.

Trump has backed away from family separations amid bipartisan and international uproar. His zero tolerance policy led officials to take more than 2,000 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 Saturday demanded the government reunite the families.

Trump took to Twitter amid the protests Saturday to show his support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 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.”

He later tweeted that he never pushed House Republicans to vote for immigration overhaul measures that failed last week, contradicting a post three days ago in which he urged GOP congressional members to pass them.

In Trump’s hometown of New York City, a massive crowd poured across the Brooklyn Bridge in 90-degree heat, chanting “shame!” and “Donald Trump must go!”

“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, whose own grandparents fled to the U.S. during the Armenian genocide.

In Washington, a crowd estimated at 30,000 gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the musical “Hamilton,” sang a lullaby from the show that he dedicated to parents unable to sing to their children. Singer Alicia Keys brought her 7-year-old son and 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. Some read: “I care, do you?”, referencing a jacket first lady Melania Trump wore when visiting child migrants. Her jacket had “I really don’t care, do U?” scrawled across the back, and that message has become a rallying cry for Saturday’s protesters.

“We care!” marchers shouted outside City Hall in Dallas.

Immigrant advocacy groups say they were thrilled to see the issue gaining traction.

“I have literally never seen Americans show up for immigrants like this,” said Jess Morales Rocketto, political director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents nannies, housekeepers and caregivers.

All across the country, groups came together in city parks and downtown squares, and photos ricocheted around social media. Marches were held from Alaska to Maine, Florida to Oregon — even in Antler, N.D., population 27.

Some of the demonstrations were boisterous. Others were 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.

Other protesters converged on the international bridge that carries traffic between El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. They carried signs with slogans like “We are all immigrants” as they chanted “Love, not hate, makes America great.”

“I have literally never seen Americans show up for immigrants like this.”

Jess Morales Rocketto, of National Domestic Workers Alliance

ELIZABETH CONLEY/AP Protestors fill Walker and Travis streets in Houston as they make their way to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s office during an immigration rally on Saturday.