Celebrities Lena Dunham, Amber Heard, and Sia held up signs and demonstrated outside a border facility housing unaccompanied immigrant minors in Texas on Sunday, in protest of the Trump administration’s now-halted family separation policy.
In a photo posted to Instagram, Dunham and various other celebrities are seen demonstrating with handmade signs — saying “Separating families is cruel” and This is about humanity” — in Tornillo, Texas.
“We came to Tornillo, Texas, to show our solidarity with the families who have been separated, the children who are alone and the parents who are grieving and the undocumented Americans who are losing more than I can fathom,” wrote Dunham. “Thank you, Tornillo, for showing us a warm border welcome and reminding us that together we rise.”
Sia called on her nearly 4.2 million followers to donate to Voto Latino, a nonprofit that aims to “empower young Latinos to be agents of change.” The singer said she will match donations up to $100,000.
Posing outside the town’s Port of Entry, Heard posted a photo with a sign that reads, “Apartheid was legal. Holocaust was legal. Legality is a matter of power, not justice.”
The celebrity-led protests come after Democrats mistakenly protested facilities in Tornillo this week, thought to house immigrant children — instead, the shelter is filled with adult border crossers.
The American-Statesman writes:
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end the separations — part of his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy — but it was unclear how his order might affect the tent city that has been erected at the border crossing. The site has become a hotbed of protesters in recent days as bipartisan pressure grew for Trump to halt the separations.
The border control facility at Tornillo has about 360 teenage immigrants who entered the country illegally, unaccompanied by adults. Federal officials are considering expanding the tent city’s capacity to house as many as 4,000 children.
President Donald Trump said on Sunday that America’s immigration system is “laughed at all over the world.”
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” tweeted the President. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”
“Our Immigration policy, laughed at all over the world, is very unfair to all of those people who have gone through the system legally and are waiting on line for years!” he added.
On Wednesday, President Trump signed an Executive Order putting an end to the family separation policy.
“We’re going to have strong, very strong borders, but we’re going to keep the families together,” President Trump told reporters at the White House before signing the directive.
“I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
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