US President Donald Trump sent in the military to suppress anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles this past weekend, but instead of stopping the protest movement in its tracks, demonstrations have taken place in cities across the entire United States to reject Trump’s immigration policies and crackdown.
Since protests erupted against immigration raids in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, they have spread to cities throughout the US, including New York City, Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Boston, and Atlanta.
As the Trump administration scrambles to meet mass deportations quotas, with officials ramping up the immigration enforcement arrest quota to 3,000 per day, ICE operations have escalated to new heights. In what activists have called “ICE terror” against immigrant communities, federal agents have taken more extreme measures including arresting young family members in “collateral arrests,” arresting immigrants seeking legal paths to staying in the country at immigration court hearings, and conducting militarized raids on workplaces.
These tactics have produced some results for Trump’s mass deportation regime: for the first time since 2019, the total number of ICE detainees has surpassed 50,000.
Momentum builds against Trump’s immigration policies
On Tuesday, June 10, thousands of people rallied in New York City, filling the streets by ICE headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza.
“We’re all out here today because like me, you are seeing your communities disappear,” said Cathy Rojas, a public school teacher in Queens. “Our communities are being kidnapped and disappeared. And I don’t use the word kidnap lightly. I use that with a point, because people are not being arrested, when all their constitutional rights are being violated, when all the laws are being broken. When they are put in concentration camps. When they are put in detention centers that violate their human rights, they are being kidnapped. They are not being arrested.”
Demonstrators marched through the streets of downtown Manhattan up to US Immigration Court on Varick Street, shouting chants in defense of immigrant rights and against Trump.
In Chicago, thousands marched on June 10 after rallying in Federal Plaza. Demonstrators held signs reading “ICE out of Chicago” as some held a banner reading “El pueblo unido defenderá a las familias migrantes!”
Protests continue in Los Angeles
Protests continued in Los Angeles despite repressive measures from local and national government. Since Sunday, the Trump administration had deployed 4,000 National Guard troops to the city, as well as 700 marines. LA’s Mayor Karen Bass, despite denouncing the ICE raids and Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, imposed a curfew for 8 pm local time.
Demonstrations took place in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, with protests in a crowded Whittier City Council meeting on Tuesday, and activists reporting that they successfully pushed ICE agents out of a hotel in Arcadia.
More protests are set to be held in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday, June 11, including at Pershing Square in DTLA in the evening.
