In major cities and tiny towns, marchers gathered across America, moved by accounts of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, in the latest act of mass resistance against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
More than 700 planned marches drew hundreds of thousands of people across the country, from immigrant-friendly cities like New York and Los Angeles to conservative Appalachia and Indiana to the front lawn of a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, near a detention center where migrant children were being held in cages.
In Denver, people symbolically wearing foil blankets are among over 4,000 people at a boisterous rally in Civic Center park.
U.S. authorities gave similar blankets to children they separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. The rally Saturday is one of hundreds across the U.S. urging the Trump administration to reunite families.
Brenda Villa of Commerce City, Colorado, says “you want to have faith” that President Donald Trump’s administration will do so as promised.
Protesters held signs saying, “Keep the kids, deport the racists,” and “Break walls, build families.”
Joan Culwell of the city of Littleton says she had never been to a protest but decided to go after first lady Melania Trump recently wore a coat that read, “I really don’t care, do u?” while traveling to visit migrant children.
Culwell wore a T-shirt saying, “I care!! Do you?”
-Associated Press