MISSOULA – Hundreds showed up to voice their dissent to Trump administration immigration policies on Wednesday in Missoula.
The group Montanans for Immigrant Justice brought together other organizations and people from all over to protest outside of the Missoula County Detention Center.
Missoula Rising founder and director Erin Erickson says US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has contracts to have migrants who have been arrested by ICE detained at the Missoula jail.
The organizations gathered hundreds of people to educate them about the policies that are being implemented now, and also to call on Montana’s congressional representatives to denounce zero-tolerance immigration policies, policies that separate children from their families and policies that criminalize immigration.
Erickson says their end goal is to spark political action that will affect policies here in Montana and nationally.
“We’ve been able to get a firm statement from Senator Tester supporting keeping the families together, Senate bill, we have a letter that just came in from Governor Bullock addressing the zero-tolerance policy. "We also have a whole slew of our city council members, state representatives, and our county commissioners that have signed off on a letter denouncing the zero-tolerance policy and racial profiling in Montana,” Erickson said.
President Trump on Wednesday bowed to relentless pressure in the US and around the world and signed an executive order that the White House said would keep families who cross into the US illegally together.
"You’re going to have a lot of happy people," Trump said as he signed the order, billing it as the most significant presidential move on immigration in half a century — even though he was fixing a problem his own administration had caused.
– information from CNN included in this report.
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