Marchers across US protest immigration policy as Donald Trump spends weekend at golf resort
US President Donald Trump at his golf resort in New Jersey as thousands protest in DC
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, hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered Saturday across America, moved by accounts of children separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border, in the latest act of mass resistance against us President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Protesters flooded more than 700 marches, from immigrant-friendly cities like New York and Los Angeles to conservative Appalachia and Wyoming.
Directly across from the White House on Saturday, demonstrators filled Lafayette Square park in an atmosphere of both indignation and sadness, before marching toward the Capitol.
The president could not hear the protesters’ shouts, a he was spending the weekend in Bedminster, New Jersey at the Trump National Golf Club.
There, too, protesters gathered on his motorcade route, many of them with signs about immigration policy.
“Asylum seekers are not criminals,” said one.
Trump took to Twitter to defend his stance on immigration.
“When people come into our Country illegally, we must IMMEDIATELY escort them back out without going through years of legal manoeuvring,” he wrote.
“Our laws are the dumbest anywhere in the world. Republicans want Strong Borders and no Crime. Dems want Open Borders and are weak on Crime!”
Starting in early May, in an attempt to staunch the flow of tens of thousands of migrants to the southern US border every month, Trump ordered the arrest of adults crossing the boundary illegally, including those seeking asylum.
Many trying to cross the US-Mexico frontier are destitute, fleeing gang violence and other turmoil in Central America.
As a result of Trump’s crackdown, distraught children were separated from their families and, according to widely broadcast pictures, held in chain-link enclosures, a practice that sparked domestic and global outrage.
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“The way for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. This is doing at least something.”
Rita Montoya, 36, a Washington lawyer, was born in California but has Mexican origins and arrived at the protest with her two sons, aged two and four.
“We’re children of immigrants,” she said.
“We’ve been putting in our dues in this country for a long time, and this country needs to start paying us some respect.”
The mood was similar in New York, where Julia Lam, 58, joined the protest with two friends and their young children in strollers.
Lam is a mother and retired fashion designer who emigrated from Hong Kong in the 1980s.
“I think it’s really cruel to separate kids,” she said.
“I am angry. I’m very sad already with what is going on with our country. I just don’t see how a human being would do such a thing.”
Lawyer Courtney Malloy, 34, said it was important to show support for immigrants and that administration policies are “not America.”
Trump’s opponents on migrant policy are on the right side of justice
“This is not what we stand for and this is not OK, and we will not stand here and watch our country be torn apart and watch babies be torn from their mothers,” she said.
Malloy held up a sign that read: “The Only Baby Who Belongs in a Cage is Donald Trump”.
Families, young people, children and the elderly – both recent arrivals and long-time citizens – all stood under a burning sun as part of a protest that a New York police officer said numbered “a couple of thousand.”
“Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here,” they chanted, also declaring a welcome for Muslims.
A band of drummers whipped up the fervour of a crowd, carrying signs such as “Our New York is Immigrant New York.”
“Abolish ICE,” read another sign, reflecting growing calls by activists for disbanding the country’s frontline immigration enforcement agency.
In the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, about 50 activists marched through downtown and travelled on to an international bridge, holding banners against the border wall Trump wants to build and militarisation of the areas alongside it.
“Parents do not know what is happening with their children, and they are housed in unhealthy areas, in cages like dogs,” said protester Jose Luis Castillo.
The protests come after the US Supreme Court on Tuesday handed Trump a major victory by upholding his ban on travellers from five primarily Muslim nations.
More than 500 women, including a member of Congress, were arrested Thursday in the US Capitol complex protesting Trump’s immigration policy.
Trump has made fighting immigration – both illegal and legal – a major plank of his “America First” policy agenda.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency makes arrests and otherwise enforces the administration’s immigration crackdown, but an emerging coalition of politicians, activists and pro-immigrant protesters has begun calling for the agency to be dismantled.
“Occupy ICE” camps have been set up in several US states.
Agence France-Presse, Tribune News Service, Associated Press
