'Close The Camps': NYC Joins Protests Of Border Conditions

EAST VILLAGE, NY — New York City activists joined nationwide protests Tuesday calling for the closure of facilities where the federal government has detained immigrants at the southern U.S. border.

A crowd of more than 200 people chanting "Close the camps!" stretched down an entire block of Second Avenue in front of the East Village's Middle Collegiate Church. Many in the crowd wrapped themselves in aluminum foil to imitate the mylar blankets that they say immigrants are given for warmth in the border facilities. Some were moved to tears during a moment of silence.

"My family did not come here to see members of my community be put in cages, to live in fear of being detained, deported or killed," said Drea Herrera, an organizer at the New York Civil Liberties Union who is the child of a Mexican and Syrian immigrants.

The rally was one of nearly 200 across the nation protesting what activists and lawmakers have described as inhumane conditions in immigrant detention centers in Texas and elsewhere. Other protests were slated to occur later Tuesday in Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley and New Jersey.

The protest came a day after federal lawmakers, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, decried the conditions at detention facilities they visited in Texas.

People in the facilities were forced to drink from toilets and said officers subjected them to "psychological warfare," such as waking them up at strange hours and calling them epithets, Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter. A top adviser to President Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, reportedly denied Ocasio-Cortez's claims.

Jess Morales Rocketto, an activist with Families Belong Together, said she has traveled to the border and seen authorities "take elementary school children in handcuffs" and "put them on a bus with cages."

"We cannot rest until every single migrant is safe. And we cannot rest until they close the camps," Rocketto said.

The rally came amid growing alarm about how the federal government is treating detained children. At least six migrant children have died in U.S. custody since September, according to news reports, and a photo of a man from El Salvador and his young daugher laying face down in the Rio Grande river reportedly caused concerns about the United States's restrictions on asylum-seekers.

Several Democratic presidential candidates, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, visited a shelter in Florida last week where about 2,300 migrant children are reportedly being held. The mayor called it "an American tragedy," as a "private corporation is abusing innocent children for profit."

Tuesday's protests also came about a year after the Trump administration separated hundreds of children from their parents at the border, sending more than 300 to the New York City area.

Protesters gathered outside the church called on lawmakers and faith leaders to stand up for immigrants and defund the U.S. immigration authorities responsible for mistreating them.

"I serve a brown, Jewish, refugee baby," said the Rev. Jacqui Lewis, the senior minister at Middle Collegiate Church. "How dare anybody who claims to be Christian in the same breath close borders against people who need asylum? That’s not Christian."

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the church where the protest was held and its location. It was Middle Collegiate Church on Second Avenue, not Memorial Collegiate Church on Seventh Avenue. It also misspelled the first name of the church's senior minister. It is Jacqui, not Jaqui.