Texas protest says “No kids in cages”

Arlington, TX – 60 people showed up at a protest organized by the Progressive Student Union (PSU) at the University of Texas at Arlington, September 4, against the Trump administration’s change to of policy on the detention of undocumented children.

Mark Napieralski, an organizer from the Progressive Student Union, spoke about how the Flores Agreement banned holding children indefinitely – and how the Trump administration is moving to keep children in indefinite detention in concentration camps along the southern border.

Speakers at the rally included Minister Katie Hays from the Galileo Church and Harold Chong from Intravarsity. Minister Hays focused on Jesus having been born to refugee parents and how the biblical narrative says that God’s place is with the marginalized. Chong spoke on the passage from Deuteronomy that states, “you must love the foreigner, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.”

The crowd grew with the passage of time, as the voices of the speakers reached students, administrative personnel and the members of various student organizations, who waited patiently in the oppressive summer heat to lend an ear to the cause that PSU was so determined to promote. Some of the crowd mentioned that they became quite emotional after they had learned about the atrocities that were happening in these concentration camps, saying that they would lend a hand in support for future protests.

Progressive Student Union member Arissa Moore spoke of the conditions these children face in the concentration camps, such as the lack of hygiene and little access to health related products, and the fact this has happened before, both to Japanese-Americans and Native Americans

Daniel Pichardo, PSU activist and local poet, shared the experiences of Mexican-Americans at the border and the United States. He pointed out that this is not a new occurrence, especially in a state that had once allowed the lynching of Mexicans in order to steal their property.

Students, faculty and community members stayed on to listen to the experiences, injustices and stories of hardship in this system of oppression by the Trump administration and closed the rally with one final chant, “No kids in cages! Close the camps!”