On Thursday afternoon, Lorraine Beausejour Crowe, 82, and her daughter Donna Crowe, 60, joined thousands of protesters in the streets of downtown Washington, DC, to rally against President Donald Trump’s administration’s assault on immigrant workers and communities. The duo held one sign that read “ICE Is Trump’s Gestapo” and another displaying a photo of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posing in front of men behind bars at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. Above the image was a quote from the Nurenberg Trials: “All Germans are to blame for the crimes of Germany, on a level with the leadership of the country—because it was they who chose and did not stop their government when it committed a crime against humanity.”
“What Kristi and her ilk, including Trump, have done is send people to a concentration camp in El Salvador.” Donna, a Virginia resident, said, “There’s no difference.”
The Crowes were two of the tens of thousands who gathered across the country for the International Worker’s Day protest on May Day. In the nation’s capital, organizers brought together members of the Maryland-based group CASA, as well as the National Education Association, and the Service Employees International Union workers, among others. As they marched from Franklin Park to the White House, protesters chanted for immigrant rights and demanded that the Trump administration bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the Maryland man unlawfully removed to El Salvador last month—back to the United States. As one protester’s sign read, “We refuse to live in a country where our neighbors can be disappeared in the dead of night.”
A couple of weeks after the administration deported Abrego Garcia—who had been granted protection from deportation to El Salvador from an immigration judge—it admitted that his removal had been due to an “administrative error.” Nonetheless, Trump officials have continued to insist on the unproven allegations that he’s a member of the MS-13 gang and have disregarded a unanimous order from the US Supreme Court to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
For many of the protesters, Abrego Garcia’s case was emblematic of what they consider to be a broader attack on the rule of law, due process, and democratic principles. Ross Wells, a 72-year-old Takoma Park resident described the administration’s actions as constituting a government “close to a fascist regime.”
Wells, who has worked with local communities in El Salvador, recalled the recent Oval Office meeting between Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and President Trump. He said he saw their agenda as being “to roll back democracy and have an authoritarian state.” He was also emphatic that the administration’s claims of powerlessness in being able to reclaim Abrego Garcia from Bukele’s notorious prison were completely false.” If Trump wanted to use his leverage, he said, he could. But the fact is, Wells said, “He doesn’t want to.”
Wells continued, “If we break due process in this country, we’re all doomed. Everyone can be put in jail. President Trump said as much to President Bukele, ‘You need to build five more of these mega-prisons so we can deport the homegrowns.’ We assume without due process, without trial.”
Others with whom I spoke also emphasized the potential risks for US citizens. “Today Kilmar, Tomorrow you,” another sign said. A 28-year-old, who works in intelligence and asked to be identified as Emma, carried a sign with the words ‘Trump wants to deport US citizens to El Salvador, you’re not safe.” She has been concerned “that many people are ignoring what’s happening right now with the deportations and thinking ‘I’m safe, I don’t have to worry about this as a white American, as a US citizen, somebody who’s lived here my entire life.’” But, she noted, “It’s happening whether they like it or not. There have been US citizens that have been deported.”
At Lafayette Square, protesters gathered to hear immigrant rights advocates and members of Congress speak on a stage with the White House as a background. Abrego Garcia’s wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, who has been advocating for his return since his removal on March 15, addressed the crowd and demanded justice for her husband. “My husband was illegally detained,” she said, her voice breaking. “Abducted, and disappeared, thrown away to die in one of the most dangerous prisons in El Salvador, with no due process—because of an ‘error.’” As the crowd chanted “Bring him home,” she called on the Trump administration to “stop playing political games with my husband’s life.”
Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House immigration subcommittee, vowed to hold a shadow hearing next week on Abrego Garcia’s case. “We’re here because we say, ‘not on our watch,’” she said, “to Trump’s kidnapping and deporting of immigrants, to going after immigrant workers.” She listed others who had faced deportation such as children who are US citizens and “in the middle of cancer treatments,” legal permanent residents, and people with legal visa status whose only issue may have been that they disagreed “with what they say, in a country that is supposed to have free speech for everybody.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) then spoke, describing the Trump administration as “stupid enough” to believe Abrego Garcia had an MS-13 tattoo on his hands based on a photoshopped image. “When you have a father who has a US citizen as a wife with young children being taken to a jail cell for the worst criminals on earth,” she said, “to be treated as if he has committed a crime, when there’s no crime to speak of, that is not the America that we all know, that is not the American we love, and that is not the America the world looks up to.”
“Kilmar, if you can hear me,” Vasquez Sura said, “I love you and keep your faith in God. Know that the children and I are still fighting for you to come back home.”
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.