Members of Southern California’s Jewish community and other immigrant rights advocates held a “Close the Camps” rally in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday, which marks a Jewish holiday of mourning and fasting.
“Tisha B’Av is a day of mourning for the plight of our refugee ancestors,” says a statement by T’ruah, one of several Jewish groups who gathered outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. “On this Jewish day of mourning, we cannot ignore the cries of those whose tragedy is right before us, the many immigrants and asylum seekers who are being treated inhumanely by the Trump administration.”
Tisha B’Av, which began Saturday and ends at sundown Sunday, commemorates the destruction of two ancient temples in Jerusalem.
The downtown L.A. protest was just one of many planned across the nation amid heightened tensions over migrant raids and overcrowded detention centers.
“We should stop caging human beings… They have a right to seek asylum,” Aryeh Kohen of the group Bend the Arc said. “We should greet people at the border with doctors and social workers and not with the army or with cages.”
While the rally was mostly peaceful, at least two detractors showed up, including a man wearing Donald Trump gear yelling “shame on all of you” with a bullhorn.
“There’s one solution: not to abolish ICE, but to uphold law and order,” he later told KTLA. “How? By coming here legally—like my mother did.”