A crowd gathered at Spokane’s federal building Tuesday to protest policy that separates children from family members who are being detained in Border Patrol facilities.
“Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcome here,” chanted people at the gathering.
A crowd that grew to about 200 people staged the noon rally at the downtown federal building. Some then marched to the nearby offices of Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
They heard from speakers upset that U.S. policy has allowed children to be taken from parents after their arrest by Border Patrol agents, and the miserable conditions the children have been forced to stay in.
One speaker was Sabrina Ryan-Helton with the group Eastern Washington All of Us or None, who read letters provided by the group Move On from children in detention.
“There are little kids here who have no one to take care of them. Not even a big brother or sister. Some kids are only two or three years old, and they have no one to take care of them, says an 11-year-old boy,” she said.
Ryan-Helton says the goal of the march was to bring awareness to the community and to also prompt citizens to contact their representatives to let them know this is not acceptable.
“We want to restore and ground this movement in the humanity of the people that are suffering at the border, and encourage people to reach out to their lawmakers and ask them to fight for opposing this zero tolerance rule. We do not believe children should be separated from their parents,” Ryan-Helton said.
Ryan-Helton says she believes the argument that the detention centers started before the Trump administration is a weak one.
“You know it went back to Clinton and Obama," she said. "They started to detain people at the border. However they didn’t separate families at the levels were seeing now. We’re at an all-time high. There are over 50,000 people that are detained by ICE. That’s one part. The other part is I didn’t know. But I didn’t know this was going on then, or I would have been having rallies about it then, and I’m sure other people would have too, " she said.
The group Tuesday finished its march outside the office of Representative McMorris Rodgers, and protesters went in small groups up to the office to file their complaints with her staff.