Thousands of Americans planning to march Saturday
Seventeen Bay Area cities are set to protest the separation of families at the border
They gathered by the thousands for the historic Women’s Marches, demanded stricter gun control in the March for Our Lives, and took over airport terminals across the nation to protest President Donald Trump’s travel ban last year.
And on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of Americans — enraged by the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.Mexico border — will take to the streets once again to protest a controversial Trump administration policy that has caused the detention of thousands of undocumented immigrants, and call on the government to reunite more than 2,000 migrant children taken from their parents.
“Families Belong Together” rallies are planned in more than 200 cities across the U.S., including 17 in the Bay Area, from San Francisco to San Jose, San Leandro, Alameda, Oakland, Concord and Morgan Hill. Rallies are also planned in New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas and Puerto Rico. Some peoplewill be marching for the first time during Trump’s presidency and others for the first time intheir lives, mobilized by a growing desire to speak out — and to act.
Heather Valentine, a licensed mental health therapist in San Jose, said she was “horrified” when she first heard of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which aims to prosecute or deport anyone who crosses the border illegally. When she saw there was no rally planned in San Jose, she decided to or- ganize one herself.
“I want (the administration) to see that the people have had enough,” she said. “If we show up in giant numbers, they’ll see that our resistance is really strong.”
Valentine, a high school counselor who works with about 200 kids, said she’s seen firsthand the immense effect family separation has on children.
“I think that people don’t fully understand the depth of how traumatizing this is,” she said. “This is a catastrophic thing. Probably the worst thing for a child is to lose their parent.”
The vast majority of the families separated at the border fled violence and turmoil in Central America and are asking for asylum in the U.S.
Trump has since signed an executive order halting the separation of families and a federal judge this week ordered immigration officials to reunite all of the children with their parents in 30 days, or within 14 days if the children are younger than 6. But it’s still unclear how exactly that will happen. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has created an unaccompanied children reunification task force to begin working toward reuniting families.
“That doesn’t stop us at all because there are still families who are being detained, there are still children separated from their parents,” said Roya Brake, who will speak at the rally in Concord on Saturday.
The city last week became the center of a heated immigration debate after Time magazine obtained a memo that revealed the U.S. Navy had plans for a detention camp at Concord’s shuttered naval weapons facility. The Contra Costa County sheriff reported Wednesday that the Department of Defense confirmed it isn’t moving forward with the plan.
San Francisco rally organizer Steve Rapport said the “zero tolerance” policy is “part of a larger agenda” by the Trump administration to paint immigrants as “animals” and criminals.
“If children in cages isn’t something that gets American people out on the street and saying ‘never again,’ then I don’t knowwhat is,” said Rapport, a naturalized U.S. citizen from England.
Political scientist Melissa Michelson said Trump’s election was a wake-up call for many progressives and Democrats who were shaken out of their bubbles and motivated to march. And then came the images and the audio of crying children, begging immigration agents to take them to their parents.
“The idea that our government was taking nursing babies away fromtheir parents is a lotmore harsh than anything we’ve seen,” she said. “That’s really a shock to people.”
Many Trump supporters and conservatives aren’t too convinced there is a crisis and say parents are to blame for illegally crossing the border.
Ben Bergquam, a conservative Christian and founder of the organization Frontline America, says he agrees with the president’s decision to separate families because he’s “protecting them.”
“If they’re truly looking for asylum, they should be thankful that they’re being held and protected in America,” he said during a Sacramento rally earlier this month.
Ana-Maria Vasquez Carrillo, 19, of Sunnyvale knows firsthand what it’s like to be separated from a parent — her father was deported to Mexico when she was young. With the help of the local advocacy organization SIREN, her parents became U.S. citizens.
“Even though we don’t necessarily live with the same fears in our household, we know a lot of people in our community who live in fear,” she said. “I realize I have protections as a citizen. I want to use my voice to elevate their voices and their stories.”