CHAMPAIGN — Protesters took to the streets of downtown Champaign on Jan. 20 to protest against ICE agents and current immigration policies.
The protest fell on the anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration for his second term. The event took place the same day as a nationwide “Free America” walkout movement to denounce ICE and protest the Trump administration.
Among the more than 100 attendees was Samantha Summers, a senior at Central High School. She said earlier today, she attended a walkout at her school, and Tuesday night’s event was her first protest.
“It’s just heartbreaking to see what our country has become. It’s kind of become an embarrassment,” Summers said.
Summer said she came to stand up for her community.
“At my school, so many of the people are from Latin America, and people have been being pulled out of my high school because their parents are scared for them and they don’t want to be sent away,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking to see my friends being terrified for their lives.”
Jake Rundall, an engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said he came out for similar reasons. He said that he’s been alarmed by the events that have unfolded over the past year under Trump.
“I have friends and loved ones that are immigrants, or that might appear to be immigrants, and I don’t want their constitutional rights to be violated. I don’t want them to live in fear,” he said.
Arthur Paganini, one of the protest organizers, said Trump is not the only one to blame for recent events – including the administration’s actions in Venezuela and Greenland and the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
“I think it’s really clear that Trump is not the cause,” said Paganini, a member of the central Illinois branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “He’s the symptom of the problem, which is the system that we live in that prioritizes profits and greed above the needs of people… These three weeks are not out of the ordinary.”
Rundall said that although he sees the country going down a dark path, he’s optimistic this era will be temporary.
“So many guardrails have been broken, and I don’t have a lot of faith that other ones are going to hold,” he said. “I hope one day we’ll look back in the history books and say, that was a mistake.”
