NYC 'Families Belong Together’ March Takes Brooklyn Bridge

NEW YORK, NY — Thousands of activists marched across the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant families. The march from Foley Square to Cadman Plaza was one of dozens around the country decrying the recent treatment of parents and children caught crossing the southern U.S. border illegally.

“When someone’s first memory of the United States is being locked up at the border, that doesn’t help the American dream,” said Chris Perez, an adjunct political science professor who came to the protest from Long Branch, New Jersey.

Holding signs that read “#EndFamilyDetention,” “Families belong together” and “America was never great,” protesters filled Foley Square to rally before the march. An all-woman drum band played under the hot sun as the crowd prepared to step off.

Tourists squeezed past the stream of protesters on the bridge, where the crowd cheered passing cars that honked their horns in support. A lone pro-Trump counter-protester was met with chants of "No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here."

The separations, done under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal border crossings, have drawn widespread public outrage across the nation in recent weeks. More than 300 of the roughly 2,000 children separated from their parents have been brought to New York, according to recent estimates.

A flagship "Families Belong Together" march in Washington, D.C. and many others across the U.S. called on President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress to halt the separations and reunify the parents and children torn from each other.

The New York Immigration Coalition spearheaded the protest in New York, which got support from more than 100 organizations and drew a diverse crowd of about 10,000 despite the late June heat. A rally in Cadman Plaza followed the march.

Gigi Gazon, the Immigration Coalition’s chief of staff, said she was heartened by the massive crowd.

“It gives me hope that these policies are an aberration and that they are not going to become the new norm,” Gazon said.

Some protesters said the separations are harming immigrants who are seeking refuge in the U.S. from dangerous conditions at home that left them no other choice. The rally was effort to resist not just the policy but also Trump's broader agenda, they said.

Jonathan Benedict, a music producer from Downtown Brooklyn, came to the march with his wife and two children. He said he thinks most Americans know the separations are wrong, "whether they're being vocal about it today or not."

"I think it could impact my family directly," Benedict said. "I don't see a difference there. I think that if we were in the unfortunate position of having to flee from another country and try to come across the border, then this could happen to us."

News of the separations had an emotional impact on Gazon, whose mother came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic as an 11-year-old fleeing a dictatorship. "It just makes me want to weep," she said.

"Just being away from her for a couple of hours so she could run to the grocery store was horrifying for me as a little child," Gazon said. "But I cannot imagine being torn from the only person I know and love without any explanation or knowing where they are."

Concern about the separations prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio to visit an East Harlem facility where more than 300 separated children have been brought. He was also turned away from a border facility in Texas.

State Attorney General Barbara Underwood joined a lawsuit this week seeking an end to the separations.

Trump signed an executive order last week purporting to stop them, and a California federal judge on Tuesday ordered the federal government to reunite all the kids with their parents within 30 days. But federal officials have reportedly said that will be difficult to do.

The Trump administration said in a Friday court filing that it plans to detain families together pending their immigration proceedings, possibly rubbing up against a federal court settlement under which children could not generally be held for more than 20 days, according to The Washington Post.

Activists will keep up the fight against family separations no matter what developments arise, Gazon said.

"Those policies of ripping apart families are not who we are," she said.

(Lead image: Demonstrators march toward the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant families on Saturday. Photo by Noah Manskar/Patch)