Immigration activists march toward the U.S. Capitol to protest the Trump Administration's immigration policy in Washington, U.S., June 30, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
By Lesley Wroughton and Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of protesters marched in cities across the United States on Saturday to demand the Trump administration reverse an immigration crackdown that has separated children from parents at the U.S-Mexico border and sparked plans for military-run detention camps.
Outside the White House, protesters waved “Families Belong Together” signs and chanted “Shame!” as religious leaders and activists urged the administration to be more welcoming of foreigners and to reunite families.
“It goes against everything we stand for as a country,” protester Paula Flores-Marques, 27, said of President Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration, a cornerstone of his election campaign. Trump was out of town.
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Trump says illegal immigration fosters crime and he implemented a “zero tolerance” policy in May to prosecute all immigrants apprehended for entering illegally. That led to the separation of more than 2,000 children from their parents, which sparked an outcry this month, even from some allies of the Republican president.
In a rare retreat on an issue that fires up his conservative base, Trump on June 20 ordered officials to detain families together.
Thousands of protesters in New York marched across the Brooklyn Bridge bearing signs with slogans like “Make America Humane Again” and “Immigrants Are Welcome Here.” In Chicago, thousands gathered to march toward the local offices of federal immigration authorities.
Organizers estimated 30,000 people had gathered in central Washington. The peaceful protest appeared to be the largest pro-immigration demonstration in the U.S. capital since at least 2010, when activists rallied to pressure then-President Barack Obama and Congress to overhaul the U.S. immigration system.
“We are here because children being held in detention don’t have a voice,” said Helen LaCroix, 40, a mother of two from Washington.
A federal judge has ordered families be reunited and the administration asked the military to house immigrant families, leading the Pentagon to mull the construction of soft-sided camp facilities.
A splinter group of several dozen protesters in Washington went to protest at what they said was the residence of Stephen Miller, a White House adviser known for his hardline views on immigration. It was the latest in a string of public protests against Trump administration officials over the family separations.
They held up a sign saying “Stephen Miller, We Know Where You Sleep.”
Since taking office in 2017, Trump has overseen an increase in arrests of people suspected of being in the country illegally. His administration is also approving fewer family visas.
Immigration has been on the rise in America and across much of the developed world for decades, roiling politics in recent years across Germany, Britain and the United States.
Trump, who on Saturday was at a golf club he owns in Bedminster, New Jersey, criticized the handful of Democratic politicians who have urged for an elimination of the U.S. agency that enforces immigration law, which is known as ICE.
“I have watched ICE liberate towns from the grasp of [criminal gangs],” Trump said on Twitter.
Immigrants made up about one in 20 U.S. residents in 1970. By 2016, their share rose to about one in seven, according the U.S. Census Bureau.
(Additional reporting by Bob Chiarito in Chicago, Miesha Miller in New York, and Sue Horton, Kevin Fogarty and Greg Savoy in Washington; Writing by Jason Lange; Editing by Mary Milliken and Susan Thomas)
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