Washington, DC — Thousands of protesters, including many families with children, rallied at the White House Saturday to condemn the Trump Administration for separating children from parents at U.S. borders. Over 30,000 took part in the Families Belong Together rally for three hours, standing in the hot June sun while dozens spoke out against the “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which in some cases has led to young children being held in chain-linked enclosures resembling kennel cages.
The immigrant family separation policy created a firestorm of controversy after ProPublica leaked an audio recording from an immigrant detention center of groups of crying children desperate to be reunited with their parents. the separation policy, Enforced by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has incited the nation, spurring several instances where citizens openly confronted cabinet members and a White House aide in restaurants and public places.
The crowd was almost entirely mainstream with many families coming in from the suburbs to express their anger at the policy.
Speakers railed against President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for their roles in separating immigrant children from parents and placing them in separate detention facilities and shelters. Juvenile speakers joined clergy and pediatricians in passionate speeches to end it, calling it an inhumane, evil and “diabolical” policy.
Dr. Amy Cohen, a child psychologist volunteer for immigrant families being housed in Texas, condemned child separation as cruel and inhumane, and she described the psychological damage it does to them. To indefinitely separate and incarcerate the thousands of immigrant children now being held would leave them with permanent emotional trauma, she said.
Dr. Cohen said the children were already experiencing trauma because their forced abandonment continued without their knowing when they would be returned to their parents. “There is no more damage that can be done to a child than robbing them of their parents,” said Dr. Cohen. “That this has been done purposefully and is unthinkably diabolical.”
Pop musician Alicia Keys also took the stage to speak out against the immigration practice. “Our humanity is at stake,” she said. “We are out here to save the soul of our nation.”
Reverend Traci Blackmon, Senior Pastor at Christ The King United Church, called it a throwback to a similar WWII era policy of rounding up of Japanese-Americans and placing them in internment camps.
She condemned the recent Supreme Court ruling last week which upheld President Trump’s immigration ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries, calling it a “mirror of racism” and linking it to a history of wrongs by the Supreme Court. “The court is wrong on this one,” she said. “And this Court has been wrong before.”
Reverend Cohen pointed out several infamous racist decisions, such as the 1857 Dread Scott, the 1896 Separate But Equal and the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, as “wrong decisions” which were eventually overturned by subsequent Supreme Court terms. “In this current moment, this Court is wrong,” said Reverend Cohen.
But she predicted more unjust immigration laws to come. “Just as all those other wrong racist decisions have been overturned, this one will be as well,” she said.
Lafayette Square filled with protesters despite early day temperatures reaching into the mid-90s. As speakers finished, thousands left Lafayette Square, march past the White House chanting “Shame!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”
As they passed the Trump International Hotel–where police had doubled up on chain-locked barricades–the angry protesters paused to shout at the building. Police watched quietly.
They walked to the Department of Justice, chanting “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!,” along the way. They placed signs against the large metal doors. Someone taped the words “In” over the limestone block on the wall of the building, changing its title to “The Department of In-Justice.” An immigrant stood holding a flag draped around him with a Bible in his other hand.
The burning afternoon sun and heat chased protesters towards the U.S. Capitol, but a line of police motorcycles forced the march to turn towards the National Mall where marchers’ energy finally fizzled out.
Increasing anger and outrage around the country with treatment of immigrants, however, seems nowhere near close to fading. There were also sister marches across the country in hundreds of other cities on Saturday.
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