On Thursday July 18, members of the Arab American Civic Council participated in a march alongside several Vietnamese American organizations, along with the ACLU Southern California and the National Day Labor Organizing Network, to protest the detention camps at the border. Joining Vietnamese community members and residents of Little Saigon in Orange County, they marched from Freedom Park all the way to Liberty Park, making sure that the city heard their demands. 

They showed up to stand against the hate and the inhumane conditions at the migrant concentration camps. Today thousands of asylum seekers’ are being detained, separated from their families and loved ones, placed in inhumane migrant concentration camps, and denied their human rights. Border Patrol are refusing to provide the people they have detained soap, toothbrushes, and safe drinking water. ICE has been indiscriminately arresting and detaining immigrants.  

The protesters’ demands were to “condemn Trump’s attack on migrants and refugees by closing the migrant concentration camps” and to “denounce last year’s attacks on our state Sanctuary law and support sanctuary laws that make our communities safe!” Calling on their local elected leaders for change, the protesters were not just asking for the rights of immigrant and refugee communities, they were asking for basic human rights.