‘Families Belong Together and Free’ march shuts down lanes at downtown bridge
From Cleveland Square Park to the Santa Fe bridge, the Families Belong Together march took over downtown El Paso.
Thousands of El Paso protestors called for President Trump to reunite families following his zero tolerance illegal immigration policy in one of 700 protests held nationwide.
Many had signs lampooning First Lady Melania Trump’s jacket that read “i don’t really care, do u?” One protester had a sign taped on a thermal blanket given to him by an asylum seeker sheltered in a church.
“One of them came in and he gave me this blanket, he said ‘This is what they gave us in the detention center’ and he told me I could have it, so I told him I was going to come out and protest on Saturday and I was gonna wear it in his honor,” said Carlos Espina, a 19-year-old student.
He said that asylum seeker was appreciative of the marches.
“He told me the conditions were very bad and he was glad that US citizens were going out and protesting and demanding better conditions for them,” Espina said.
Protestors shut down part of the international bridge for about an hour, reducing all traffic to one lane at the exit while smaller group from both countries blocked half the bridge at the border, their message heard in two countries.
“We cannot treat immigrants as criminals, we cannot put them in jail, and much less incarcerated children in the way the United States has been doing,” Said Fernando Garcia, executive director for the Border Network for Human Rights.
The Families belong together march ending and traffic returning to normal, but Garcia said their mission goes beyond a one day march.
“It is about the children, but it’s about more than that. It’s about the criminalization of families, the destruction of the DREAMers dream, it is the building of walls as a shameful way to deal with immigration,” Garcia said.
ABC-7 did see counter protesters with signs reading support legal immigration and Make America Great Again hats, but they declined to speak to ABC-7.
