Activists rally in NYC over Trump immigration policies

Thousands in Manhattan on Saturday marched across the Brooklyn Bridge — one of hundreds of demonstrations nationwide — to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including a rescinded practice of separating immigrant children and parents suspected of illegally crossing the U.S. border together.

Despite the reversal, the marchers note, most children haven’t been reunited with their parents.

“Families belong together and FREE!” read one sign clipped to a baby’s stroller.

“We love our kids cage-free,” read another sign.

The administration has said that immigration agents are enforcing the law and that failing to do so encourages illegal immigration.

Tens of thousands of people joined sister rallies in hundreds of cities, including Dallas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Washington.

In Manhattan’s Foley Square, sign-holding picketers filled the plaza, a nearby courthouse’s steps and surrounding streets, chanting, banging drums, and handing out anti-Trump literature, before marching toward the bridge for a rally across the East River in Brooklyn.

“Cruelty towards children — it’s definitely a terrorizing technique,” said Teddy Pearlman, 65, of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Pearlman, a retired special-education teacher, said, “I’m not really interested in enforcement” of immigration laws. More important, he said, are looser rules to admit more immigrants legally.

Pepper Lewis, a 39-year-old retired caretaker from Croton-on-Hudson, wore a T-shirt bearing the title of John Lennon’s “Imagine” song, which envisions a world without borders and without countries.

Lewis said she wants no immigration limits, assuming a migrant has good intentions and isn’t a member of a gang like MS-13.

“If we all open our arms and welcome one another and welcome each other, this world would be a much better place,” she said.

Dan Ocampo, 22, of the Upper East Side, a paralegal and U.S. citizen originally from the United Kingdom, said he would be willing to agree to the U.S.-Mexico border wall proposed by Trump and stronger borders in exchange for concessions such as the abolition of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, easing immigration limits, and more acceptance of refugees in need.

“Undocumented people in this country is not good for anybody. It’s not good for them. It’s not good for anybody else,” he said. “It creates abuse. They live in fear of the law. They’re abused by employers. And it’s a little bit lawless in a sense.”

To deter illegal immigration, the Trump administration adopted a “zero-tolerance” policy to arrest and prosecute immigrants who are suspected of illegally sneaking across the border.

Under the policy, if an adult was with a child when caught at the border, the U.S. government would put the child into a shelter or foster care during the prosecution. Trump reversed the separation practice on June 20 under political pressure.

Despite the reversal, an estimated 2,000 families remain separated, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. On Tuesday, a federal judge in California ordered the children reunited within 30 days in response to an ACLU suit.

The administration has said that migrant families caught crossing the border will now be detained together.

Michael Altman, a retired welfare case worker and third-grade teacher who lives in Manhattan’s Financial District, held a bright sign that read “ORANGE ALERT,” with a crude drawing of Trump and the words, “WANTED FOR 2500 CHILD ABDUCTIONS.”

“I don’t know what we will accomplish,” Altman, 76, said on the steps of state Supreme Court on Centre Street. “But I know to be silent in the face of children being put in cages in this country is unforgivable, and I couldn’t forgive myself if I weren’t here.”