What happened: Crowds took to the streets of US cities Saturday to demand “Families Belong Together” nearly two months after the Trump administration implemented its “zero tolerance” policy toward undocumented immigrants, prompting the separation of thousands of children from their parents.
Our live coverage of the nationwide “Families Belong Together” protests has concluded. Read all about them here, or see photos here. To watch live CNN, visit CNNGo.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic candidate for New York’s 14th congressional district, joined a small march today in Queens, New York.
They chanted: “Sin papeles, sin miedo,” which means “no papers, no fear.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who ousted 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley during Tuesday’s primary election, has called for the abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She also visited Tornillo, Texas, to protest the separations of families at the border.
Rep. Maxine Waters, who’s been warring with President Trump in recent days after encouraging protesters to heckle and harass members of Trump’s Cabinet in public spaces, just spoke at the L.A. rally, where she told the President he’s gone too far with his zero-tolerance policies that led to separating families.
She continued, “You are putting them in cages. You are putting them in jails. And you think we’re going to stand by and allow you to do that? I don’t think so. Donald Trump, you think you can get away with everything, but you have gone too far when you are trying to break up families in the way that you do.”
Watch:
Singer John Legend, speaking to a crowd in Los Angeles today, urged protesters to take action before performing his new song “Preach.”
Legend said the song hasn’t been released, but it felt right for the moment.
“I know that opening up Twitter right now feels like it can be a horror show, so much of the news is shocking and maddening and depressing,” he said. “I think some of us have a strong temptation to just disengage, but we can’t. We can’t do that. I can’t do that. I have to do something.”
Here’s a portion of Legend’s new song:
Holly Johnson 46, and her twin 8-year-olds Dexter and Gretchen are marching in Washington, DC, today. Johnson told CNN she is “horrified” about what is happening and believes the government doesn’t have a plan to reunify the separated children with the parents.
“You have to show up” in times like these, even if you aren’t sure it will change things, she said. “It’s about who do I want to be in these times.”
Johnson told CNN she worries America is giving the next generation “a world that is terrifying,” so she is trying to teach them now to be “resilient and strong.”
Jaime Cammack says her kids have been dedicating their nightly prayers to separated children.
Cammack, 32, of Fredericksburg, Virginia, said at bedtime she talks about the family separations with her children. She said she asks her children what they want to pray for and that they now say the separated kids.
Cammack, her daughters — Genevieve, 5, Neve, 4, and Allister, 7 — and other family members marched today in Washington, DC, against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
She said they have a lot of family friends from Mexico, so it’s personal for her. “These kids don’t deserve this,” Cammack said of the separated children.
Protesters gathered today in downtown Bedminster, New Jersey, which is about 4 miles from President Trump’s golf club.
The President and his family left Washington on Friday and are staying at the Trump National Golf Club for the weekend.
Here’s what the protests look like:
Protesters in Washington, DC, have been withstanding insanely hot temperatures to march from Lafayette Square to the White House.
As they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and passed the Trump hotel, demonstrators shouted “shame, shame, shame” and “hey, hey, ho ho Donald trump has got to go.” Other protesters booed the hotel, and some left protest signs on the barricades surrounding the building
They stopped at the Department of Justice, where shouted the same, but about Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The crowds chanted “vote them out” as they marched back and forth. Demonstrators held signs that read “Resist” and “Not my president.”
Watch the protesters on the move:
Vito Maggiolo, a public information officer for DC Fire and EMS, said the agency is treating a number of heat-related emergencies today at the protest.
At least 45 people have been taken to medical and cooling tents to be treated. Two people have been transported to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
There are firetrucks on scene, and one of the trucks is spraying mist for people to walk through to cool down.
Watch more:
We caught up with a protester marching in Chicago and asked him what his message was for President Trump.
He had a simple answer: “Leave office.”
“You feel that passionately about it?” CNN asked.
He responded: “Very. He’s the worst thing that’s happened to this country.”
Watch:
Crowds of people are gathering in downtown Los Angeles right now to protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
California Sen. Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and several celebrities, as well as several families affected by the immigration policies, will be delivering remarks at the rally.
Watch more:
Rebecca Schaeffer, 38, is attending today’s rally in Washington, D.C. with her husband, Sam Allen, a British permanent resident (aka a “green card” holder), and their two children, Ida, 6, and Juniper, 2.
Schaeffer knows it’s the worsening of a policy that’s been in place for some time, but said she is concerned that President Tump is testing his limits. “We need to resist every point. He’s testing the limits of what he can do. We have to make it as difficult and slow as possible,” she told CNN.
Her daughter, Ida, says she made her sign to protest that “children are being ripped from their parents.”
“I want them to know what’s happening,” Schaeffer said. “It’s going to be their generation’s fight. I want to educate them and make them strong.”
It’s very hot in the nation’s capital today — but that hasn’t stopped protesters from marching on Washington, DC.
Temperatures are in the 90s in parts of city. CNN’s Rene Marsh reports that firetrucks have been spraying out water, apparently to help keep the crowds cool.
“People are commenting on just how warm it is, but it’s actually secondary because of everything they’re hearing up on the stage,” Marsh said.
Akossiwa Lawrence came to the Washington march with her daughter, Delilah, who’s almost 2-years-old.
The 36-year-old teacher from Maryland says she sees her family in the faces of asylum seekers who are currently in the news.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “That could have very easily been me and my mom.”
Lawrence says she was 6-years-old when she came to the United States from Liberia. Her family sought asylum and eventually, she said, they became US citizens.
Asked what she thinks about the Trump administration’s plans to reunite families by holding them together in detention facilities, Lawrence says “that causes great concern for me.”
It’s an all-too-familiar idea, she says, that harkens back to the way Japanese Americans were treated decades ago.
“I guess it’s just what they know to do when they fear something or someone,” Lawrence said.
Families seeking asylum, she said, shouldn’t be treated like criminals. “I don’t think they’re coming over here to manipulate the system or steal jobs,” she said. “They need help.”
Leah, the 12-year-old daughter of undocumented immigrant parents, said she can’t sleep or study because she lives with the fear that her mother will be deported.
“I live with the constant fear of losing my mom to deportation,” she told the crowd at a rally in Washington. “My mom is strong, beautiful and brave. She is also a person who taught me how to speak up when I see things that aren’t fair.”
Leah said US Immigration Customs and Enforcement “wants to take away my mom from me.”
“I don’t like to live with this fear. It’s scary. I can’t sleep. I can’t study. I am stressed,” she said. “I am afraid that they will take my mom away while she is at work, out driving or at home.”
She called on the administration to end the practice of separating families at the border.
“Our government has to do the right thing and stop separating us from our parents and stop locking us up,” Leah said. “I won’t give up fighting for the right to stay with my mom. I am not asking for a favor. It is my right to stay as a child to live in peace with my mother and the rest of my family.”
People close to the US southern border have been protesting Trump’s immigration policies near detention facilities since the outrage for family separations began.
A group has gathered in McAllen, Texas — home to a processing center where many immigrant families were sent — today, too.
Elizabeth Rodriguez said she’s been advocating for the migrant community for years, and she’s thrilled to see the rest of the country protesting today, too.
Demonstrators are marching through New York City against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Here are just a few of the signs they carried:
“This episode of Handmaids Tale sucks”
“Mr. President, why do you like Mexican food, but not Mexican people?”
“Kids should not be in cages”
The youngest protester at the Washington, DC, might be 3-month-old Amos.
His mom, who only identified herself as Daphne, was pregnant with him when she attended March for Our Lives in March.
She said she’s starting Amos early when it comes to protesting.
Jeremy Parzen took this video of demonstrators in Texas chanting “no baby jails” outside Houston City Hall at a Keep Families Together rally.
They group carried protest signs and gathered under a swath of trees.
Allison Thompson, a 49-year-old lawyer, drove to Washington, DC, with a group from Fayetteville, North Carolina. She said she’s a registered Republican and that this is her first protest.
“As soon as I heard about the march, I told my husband, ‘I’m going. I don’t care where it is,’” Thompson said.
As a mother, she said, hearing about the administration’s practice of separating immigrant families shook her to her core. She thinks of her 9-year-old and 12-year old son and how traumatized they would be in a similar situation.
Carrie Amabile, 38, of Fayetteville, traveled with Thompson and said this is also her first protest. She toted a sign that said “Love thy neighbor.”
Her two daughters are at home in North Carolina, but Amabile said before she left she made sure to tell them why she was going to protest today.
