City Councilman Mike Bonin and 17 other demonstrators were arrested Monday during a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in downtown Los Angeles decrying the federal agency’s handling of undocumented families entering the country.
The demonstrators began gathering about 9 a.m. outside ICE headquarters at 535 N. Alameda St., and by late morning, police declared an unlawful assembly and started to clear the street.
A total of 18 demonstrators, including Bonin, were taken into custody, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Tessie Borden, a spokeswoman for the protesters, said the demonstration was part of “a nationwide call to end the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s immoral separation of families.”
“(Last) weekend, people in rallies across the nation protested ICE’s policies to separate families and, alternately, to pen them together in isolated internment camps,” Borden said. “People of all backgrounds, including political leaders at the federal and local level, are beginning to call for the abolition of ICE.”
In a statement prior to the rally, Bonin said: “When the government rips kids from their parents’ arms, opens baby jails, and throws families seeking asylum into internment camps, how does a parent not risk arrest? What’s happening is sick and evil, and treating it like a mere policy disagreement is absurd and complicit. For our kids, for our country, and for our humanity, we need to roar and to resist — with our voices and with our bodies.”
Bonin was cited and eventually released from custody.