Undocumented Activists Get Arrested, Risk Deportation as DACA Protests Sweep Across the U.S.

People across the country—including schoolchildren and undocumented immigrants—turned out on Tuesday to protest the Trump administration’s ending of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that shielded some 800,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation.

In New York City, a group of undocumented activists and their allies were arrested outside Trump Tower, as other protesters sat across Fifth Avenue blocking traffic. According to Movimiento Cosecha, at least a dozen activists—nine of whom are themselves DACA recipients—were arrested during the protest.

“We are angry for all the young undocumented immigrants that haven’t turned 16 yet and are waiting to apply for DACA. We are angry, for all the DACA parents that could lose the job that supported their family. We are angry, for all the plans that DACA recipients had that now seem impossible,” Thais Marques, a spokesperson for Movimiento Cosecha, which organized the protest, said in a statement.

“But we are also strong,” Marques added. “And no politician- not Trump, not Paxton- can take that away from us. Our strength and resilience have never depended on a work permit.”

Activists also rallied against the administration’s DACA decision in Washington, D.C., where protesters massed at the White House before marching to the president’s nearby hotel.

And in Denver, a group of students walked out of school.

This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.

 
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