Immigration activist forces evacuation of Statue of Liberty

A woman protesting against US immigration policy climbed the Statue of Liberty’s base and forced the monument’s evacuation on Independence Day.

The protest came hours after several other demonstrators had hung a banner on the statue’s pedestal and had been arrested.

The climber – named by a federal official as Therese Okoumou – engaged in a fourhour stand-off with police before two officers climbed up to the base and went over to her. She was due to appear in court later.

With the dramatic scene unfolding on live television, she and the officers edged carefully around the rim of the statue’s robes toward a ladder, and she climbed down about eight metres to the monument’s observation point and was taken into custody.

The woman had participated earlier in displaying a banner calling for abolishing the federal government’s chief immigration enforcement agency, said Jay W. Walker, an organiser with Rise and Resist, which arranged the demonstration.

The group initially tweeted that the climber had “no connection” to the demonstration.

Mr Walker later said she was involved but others had no idea she would make the climb, which was not part of the planned protest.

“We don’t know whether she had this planned before she ever got to Liberty Island or whether it was a spur-of-themoment decision,” he said.

Regardless, he said he felt the publicity would help the group’s cause.

A spokesman for the National Park Service, which runs the monument, saw the situation differently.

“I feel really sorry for those visitors today” who had to leave or couldn’t come, spokesman Jerry Willis said. “People have the right to speak out. I don’t think they have the right to co-opt the Statue of Liberty to do it.”

The climber ascended from the observation point, Mr Willis said. Visitors were forced to leave Liberty Island hours before its normal 6:15pm closing time, he said.

Rise and Resist opposes President Donald Trump’s administration and advocates ending deportations and family separations at the Us-mexico border.

Under Mr Trump’s zerotolerance policy, the government has begun requiring border agents to arrest and prosecute anyone caught entering the country illegally.

That resulted in more than 2,000 children being separated from their parents within six weeks this spring.

Under public pressure, Mr Trump later halted his policy of taking children from their detained parents.

0 Police talk to a woman protesting on the Statue of Liberty