Reprinted from Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Protesters blocking door of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. Photo: Twitter/@kylegrillot
From large metropolitan areas to smaller cities and towns, people are taking to the streets in righteous outrage and protest against the Trump/Pence regime’s vicious, inhuman policy of tearing immigrant children from their parents.
Thursday, January 21: In Washington, DC, in a protest organized by an interfaith group fighting for the rights of undocumented immigrants, dozens of children wrapped in Mylar blankets — ”like the ones issued to immigrant children in concentration-camp detention centers — ”laid down on the floor of Capitol Hill. The protesters demanded an end to the Trump/Pence regime’s “zero tolerance” policy targeting all people crossing the southern border without documents, including those applying for political asylum, with arrests.
In Portland, Oregon, officials announced they were shutting down the ICE facility temporarily because of the “Occupy ICE” protests that began earlier in the week and have continued 24/7. There were protests at other ICE offices and facilities across the country, including Refuse Fascism activists and others blocking the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, and 300 people at the Louisville, Kentucky, office.
In New York City, hundreds of people called out by different Jewish groups and synagogues protested at Federal Plaza, and a silent vigil was held outside a detention center in Harlem where kids taken away from their parents are being held.
A couple in California who has started a campaign on Facebook, aiming to raise $1,500 to help toward legal expenses for immigrant families who are being torn apart, said that as of Thursday evening over $17 million in donations have poured in since last Saturday.
On Wednesday, June 20, protests against the Trump/Pence regime’s vicious policy of separating children from their parents continued across the country, from Bangor, Maine where 150 people demonstrated at a Republican Congressman’s office, with one woman holding a sign “Evil Hitler Separated Families. America?”, to Phoenix Arizona, where immigrants’ rights advocates squared off against pro-Trump bigots. In Chicago, dozens marched in RefuseFascism’s “El Silencio es Complicidad #FamiliesBelongTogether” protest in front of the Chicago Art Institute. Another RefuseFascism.org protest — ”Stop Ripping Kids Away From Parents“ took place in Honolulu at the Federal Building.
There were protests in Providence, Rhode Island, Baltimore, Maryland and Raleigh, North Carolina. Thirty people gathered in Westborough, Mass. In Portland, Oregon, people maintained their weekly vigil outside an ICE office. In New York City, a coalition of groups organized a World Refugee Day rally and march to “Stop the Refugee Ban, Save Asylum and Defend Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” In Grand Rapids, Michigan, people protested Bethany Christian Services for accepting children snatched from their parents with signs reading “No profit for kidnappers,” and “End the contract.”
As we write this, protesters have gathered at La Guardia Airport in New York Tuesday night to meet children being flown to the area. As the facilities are being identified—in Harlem, Long Island, New Jersey, people have gathered in front of them to protest.
Significantly a number of the protests went ahead after Trump announced his new Executive Order (see further analysis of the Executive Order) and new protests against the Trump/Pence regime’s fascist assault on immigrants and refugees have been announced. One person in Duluth, Minnesota tweeted they were so outraged they were organizing a protest themselves against Trump, who’s speaking there tonight.
In another significant development, over 100 Microsoft employees posted an open letter demanding the company “put children and families above profits,” and end its work with ICE. “As the people who build the technologies that Microsoft profits from, we refuse to be complicit.” At other Silicon Valley tech firms employees have also been circulating emails and supporting protests against Trump’s assaults on immigrant families.
On Tuesday, June 19, Refuse Fascism organized protests in several cities around the country: At Union Square in New York City; in Philadelphia — ”where Pence was at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association; and a march to the ICE office in San Francisco.
In New York City, people marched from Union Square to the Manhattan immigrant detention center. In the protest outside the San Francisco ICE headquarters, several hundred people, including immigrants, activist, and tech workers, blocked a section of the street at one point. People chanted, “Stop taking the children” An immigrant addressed the crowd, saying, “We are the people who wash your dishes, wash the underwear and give the food to the children…. We are not criminals. Trump is the criminal. We are all human beings.”
In El Paso, several hundred protesters from New Mexico and Texas marched to the ICE processing center. At one point people went into the street and blocked traffic. Several religious forces spoke at the rally, including Black clergy and Muslims. One reverend told the crowd, “We are morally outraged because a nursing child has been ripped from the arms of her mother, we are morally outraged because a father whose child was torn from his arms committed suicide in prison.” Members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas talked about the physical and mental suffering being inflicted on these children.
Protesters gathered in Palmdale, in southern California, outside the office of a Republican congressman to oppose the ripping away of children. About 80 people, including DACA immigrants and their families, gathered to set off on a caravan to other Republican politicians’ office to denounce the family separations.
On Monday, June 18, protesters left shoes outside the ICE detention center in downtown Los Angeles to symbolize the children being snatched away and terrorized by the government. In New Orleans, dozens demonstrated outside of the Convention Center where Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions was speaking. About 100 protesters rallied in New York City, organized by the Asian American Federation of New York, against the ICE arrest of a Chinese immigrant, who had been in the U.S. for 20 years, during a green card interview.
There were #FamiliesBelongTogether rallies in dozens of cities last Thursday night, June 14. In Los Angeles, hundreds marched from MacArthur Park to the immigrant detention center downtown. Many of the marchers were people who are undocumented themselves. And many were teachers who have seen firsthand how ICE raids and deportations have split apart children and their parents.
You are not alone #FamiliesBelongTogther #FamiliesBelongTogetherLA pic.twitter.com/MMNiixf3cc
— Anna Maltese 🹠(@MalteseAnna) June 15, 2018
— Anna Maltese 🹠(@MalteseAnna) June 15, 2018
“At the detention center in downtown LA where immigrants are being detained. We waved our phones at them, and they waved what looked like reading lights back at us and flipped the lights on and off in their rooms.” @MalteseAnna
On the other side of the country, in Philadelphia, hundreds gathered at the ICE office, and Refuse Fascism activists led a reading of the pledge to refuse to accept a fascist America.
Yellow bracelets worn by marchers in many places
On Friday, when U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions came to speak in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on “law enforcement and immigration,” Refuse Fascism and some 150 others greeted this point man for the Trump/Pence regime’s fascist attacks on immigrants with shouts of “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” and “In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America!”
In Huntington Village, New York, dozens gathered wearing yellow bracelets to show solidarity with immigrants. Immigrants being prosecuted and put in prison camps by the government for crossing the border are reportedly being made to wear yellow bracelets—reminiscent of the way Hitler’s Nazi Germany forced Jews to wear yellow stars, political prisoners to wear red triangles, and homosexuals to wear pink triangles. About 80 people gathered in Greenville, South Carolina, for “A Vigil for Families Torn Apart,” where one participant said, “We want to bring attention to how quickly we’re moving away from just basic values of human rights and decency.”
Over the weekend, protests took place in several cities in Texas, the state where thousands of children are imprisoned. A Father’s Day march began in El Paso and ended in Tornillo, where several hundred protesters spoke out about the tent city where immigrant children are being detained. There were also protests on Sunday, June 17, in the state’s capital, Austin. In McAllen, hundreds demonstrated outside the “tent camp,” i.e., open-air concentration camp, that was just set up to house immigrant children who have been ripped away from their parents.
Some 200 held a Father’s Day protest at the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey, the largest immigration center in the New York/New Jersey area, where many immigrants are detained for extended periods under horrendous conditions.
From “The Ripping Away of Children From Their Parents Is a Crime Against Humanity and Must Stop NOW!”: “The outrage against this crime must continue. That outrage must be transformed into actions against this that grow in mass and force until this does STOP. And these actions must be built into a movement to drive this fascist—yes, fascist, face it for what it really is—regime from power.”
Check back at revcom.us for continuing news on the protests.
Hundreds and hundreds of us protesting family separation at Boston ICE #KeepFamiliesTogether pic.twitter.com/U07mcJCDAH
— UniteBlue (@ManMet80) June 17, 2018