Carrying signs, singing and chanting, hundreds of local community members gathered at the Allen Street gates on Saturday afternoon to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policy that led to the separation of thousands of migrant children and parents crossing the southern border.
The Families Belong Together Rally for Migrant Justice was among those being held across the country calling for an end to the ‘zero-tolerance’ policy to prosecute anyone crossing the border without a visa, including those seeking asylum. The policy led to more than 2,000 children being separated from their parents before President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep families together.
Protestors want those already separated reunited as well as an end to detention of families. Those who spoke in State College also denounced how undocumented immigrants have been treated, noting scenes of children being kept in caged areas and the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) .
‘The unconscionable treatment of immigrants at the border and in this country is a political and moral failure that can only be resolved when we recognize our approach to this must be multi-faceted,’ rally organizer Laura Shadle said. ‘We must engage politically and hold our elected officials and political candidates accountable on immigration issues… We also need direct action in taking on ICE. That is why I think it’s incredible we have groups, politicians and direct action groups… leading the fight on this, coming together and looking for a better solution.’
Rev. Bret Myers, pastor at Faith United Church of Christ in State College, spoke about the experiences and teachings of a professor he studied under — writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
Wiesel was a teenager when his family, along with most other Jewish people in Hungary, were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp at the height of World War II. There, Wiesel, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize for his activism against violence and racism, was orphaned and he would later write about the experience in the book ‘Night.’
‘He and Jewish people like him were called by the very same name I recently heard the highest ranking government official in our land call immigrants: ‘animals,’’ Myers said. ‘We hear the same rhetoric today that dehumanizes people and has led to policies that ban people from entering our country based on religion and nationality, that separate children from parents, that have caged men, women and children, that have even small children having to go to court all alone.’
Myers said that jailing and separating families who are seeking asylum are acts of violence that need to be countered with nonviolence, but forcefully with civil disobedience.
‘What do we do when we see history repeating itself? We don’t remain silent. We don’t remain complicit,’ Myers said. ‘We cannot go on thinking we can uphold values like civility when confronting rapacious and deliberate immorality. We must remain nonviolent but civilly disobedient, peaceful but unwilling to stand for violence from the other side.’
Patrick Jones-O’Brien, of Planned Parenthood, said that increased deportations are not only a Trump issue, but that they have been amplified under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
He added that the Trump administration’s separation of families is a public health issue because of long-term effects on children’s development.
‘Trump’s policy of separating and detaining families is an egregious attack on immigrant communities,’ he said. ‘He’s attacking their ability to receive health care and their right to live their lives with dignity. This attack on immigrants, rooted in xenophobic racism, must be resisted on every level by every person.’
Jacob Lee, of Centre County Democratic Socialists of America, said he wants to see ICE abolished, an end to deportations and the ‘demilitarization of our borders,’ adding that family detention ‘is merely the newest innovation in a long history of cruelty.’
‘Today serves as a reminder that, even though it may not always feel like it, we are many and they are few,’ Lee said. ‘That reminder is important in times like these.’
Rev. Carol Thomas Cissel, pastor of Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Centre County, questioned the role of ICE, which was created in the wake of September 11, 2001 and granted a combination of criminal and civil authorities to protect national security.
‘That is not what is happening now,’ she said. ‘What ICE is doing today has little, if anything, to do with answering the threat that was posed by 9/11. Today ICE is operating without boundaries, using violence, inflicting pain and intimidating those on the margins. It must stop. They are operating with a legality that must be questioned. ICE is tearing families apart and systemically destroying lives.’
She paraphrased Maya Angelou as she called on protestors to continue to try to make a difference after the rally ended.
‘People will forget what you said. People will forget you stood on this sidewalk. People will not forget how you felt about them and how you fought to evoke change.’
