Statue of Liberty climber pleads not guilty to trespassing

NEW YORK — An unrepentant protester who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty on a busy Fourth of July in what prosecutors called a “dangerous stunt” pleaded not guilty Thursday to misdemeanor trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Activists packed into a Manhattan courtroom cheered when a federal magistrate judge released Therese Okoumou without bail after she had spent the night behind bars. Okoumou responded by raising her fist and blowing kisses to her supporters.

Outside court, the naturalized U.S. citizen from Congo told reporters that she climbed the landmark as a spur-of-the moment protest over the Trump administration’s zerotolerance immigration policies that resulted in the separation of immigrant children from parents accused of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

“When they go low, we go high and I went as high as I could,” Okoumou said, paraphrasing former First Lady Michelle Obama. “No children belong in a cage,” she added.

Okoumou, who goes by her middle name, Patricia, sported a T-shirt reading “White Supremacy is Terrorism” that she had worn inside-out in court.

Okoumou, 44, of Staten Island, allegedly “staged a dangerous stunt that alarmed the public and endangered her own life and the lives of the (New York Police Department) officers who responded to the scene,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.