US

Protesters Hit The Streets Of Chicago In Mass Demonstration Against Trump’s Immigration Agenda

Will Racke/TheDCNF

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Will Racke Immigration and Foreign Policy Reporter
Font Size:

CHICAGO — Thousands of people gathered in Daley Center Plaza on a sweltering Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies, part of a nationwide day of outrage sparked by the separation of illegal immigrant families at the southwest border.

Despite oppressive humidity that pushed the heat index to 105 degrees, a huge crowd filled the plaza for a rally before marching through closed streets in the heart of Chicago’s downtown Loop district.

As they marched, the demonstrators — an incongruous mix of suburban families, college students, ethnic activists, labor radicals and liberal retirees — chanted slogans calling on the government to reverse its tough immigration enforcement tactics.

“No hate. No fear. Immigrants are welcome here!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” they shouted.

Protesters march down Clark Street in downtown Chicago in a mass demonstration against the Trump administration's immigration policies on June 30, 2018. Will Racke/TheDCNF

Protesters march down Clark Street in downtown Chicago in a mass demonstration against the Trump administration’s immigration policies on June 30, 2018. (Will Racke/TheDCNF)

Some of the more strident demonstrators called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency in charge of locating and deporting illegal immigrants in the interior of the country.

Although it does not carry out family separations at the border, ICE has become increasingly reviled among the progressive left and, recently, mainstream Democratic politicians such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who on Thursday became the first senator to call for the complete dismantling of the agency.

A protester holds up a sign calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a demonstration in Chicago on June 30, 2018. Will Racke/TheDCNF

A protester holds up a sign calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a demonstration in Chicago on June 30, 2018. (Will Racke/TheDCNF)

Organized by the Latino Policy Forum and 16 other civil rights and labor groups, the Chicago march was one of the largest of more than 700 protests that took place across the country on Saturday. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people participated, organizers said, basing their estimate on responses to a Facebook page set up for the protest.

The day of national protest came in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, particularly its now-rescinded policy of prosecuting as many illegal immigrants for unlawful entry as possible. That zero-tolerance policy had led to the separation of more than 2,000 migrant children from their parents, a controversial practice that immigration activists, religious leaders and Trump’s political opponents called needlessly cruel and inhumane.

Under intense political pressure, Trump on June 20 ordered immigration authorities to detain migrant families together instead of separating them while adults are prosecuted. Then the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection on Monday said border agents would no longer refer cases of misdemeanor illegal entry to federal prosecutors, citing a lack of space in family detention facilities. (RELATED: Trump Signs Executive Action To Stop Family Separation)

Those two moves effectively returned the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policy to its pre-“zero tolerance” status quo. But for many protesters at the Chicago rally, detaining illegal immigrant families together indefinitely, as the administration is now seeking to do, is as unacceptable as family separation.

“I think it’s important to protest when [the government] does something antithetical to the values we hold as Americans,” Gabby Frates, 29, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Frates, a native of Cleveland living in Chicago, said she had been politically active prior to the Trump administration, but was especially concerned about its immigration policies.

“We can’t just sit back and let it happen,” she said, referring to the separation of illegal immigrant families.

Signs calling the Trump administration "fascist" were ubiquitous at a protest against its immigration policies in Chicago on June 30, 2018. Will Racke/TheDCNF

Signs calling the Trump administration “fascist” were ubiquitous at a protest against its immigration policies in Chicago on June 30, 2018. (Will Racke/TheDCNF)

Like previous anti-Trump demonstrations, the immigration march in Chicago was rife with placards, signs and effigies denouncing the administration as a fascist regime.

Comparisons to Nazi Germany were common, with many demonstrators likening Trump’s zero-tolerance policy to the separation of Jewish families who were taken to concentration camps during the Holocaust. One elaborate sign-puppet hybrid caricatured White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, who is Jewish, as Nazi propaganda master Joseph Goebbels.

A man holds a sign depicting White House aide Stephen Miller as a Nazi official during a protest in Chicago on June 30, 2018. Will Racke/TheDCNF

A man holds a sign depicting White House aide Stephen Miller as a Nazi official during a protest in Chicago on June 30, 2018. (Will Racke/TheDCNF)

Nazi references aside, demonstrators more frequently invoked what they saw as American ideals in their criticism of the administration’s immigration agenda. Dozens carried signs bearing images of the Statue of Liberty, which, thanks to Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” mounted on its base, has become a symbol of America’s history as a destination for “huddled masses” of immigrants.

Maribel Mejia, center, protests with family members against the Trump administrations immigration agenda in Chicago on June 30, 2018. Will Racke/TheDCNF

Maribel Mejia, center, protests with family members against the Trump administrations immigration agenda in Chicago on June 30, 2018. (Will Racke/TheDCNF)

One demonstrator, 30-year-old Marine Corps veteran Maribel Mejia, said her views on immigration were informed by her service in the military, which is known for integrating people from all walks of life into a unified whole.

“Everybody’s an asset here,” she told TheDCNF, adding that America, like the Marine Corps, can find a “purpose for everybody.”

Follow Will on Twitter

Send tips to will@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel