The “No Kings” rallies and protests this weekend generated a lot of attention, but smaller protests have been taking place weekly, on Tuesday mornings, at Phoenix Immigration Court. Attendees are protesting Trump administration immigration policies and ICE actions.
Sam Dingman visited the court at Seventh Avenue and Van Buren Street in downtown Phoenix.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: Good morning, Sam.
SAM DINGMAN: Hey, Mark, greetings from the parking lot of immigration court.
BRODIE: Yeah, so what does it look like? What what what does this protest look like right now?
DINGMAN: Well, it's been a pretty interesting morning all around. I'm here with producer Nick Sanchez, and we, just a few minutes ago, watched as the security guards here at immigration court put up a rope barrier around the perimeter of the building, and they told me that is because there has been so much activity recently, they said they have had to, in their words, “forcibly keep people on the sidewalk.” That said, protest activity has been pretty light here this morning. We have seen, I would say maybe five people.
BRODIE: Hm. What did the the folks who were there have to say about why they're there?
DINGMAN: Well, I spoke to a couple of people with some different organizations. The first person that I spoke to is a woman named Jackie. She is here with an organization called Puente, and they're actually not here to protest on the sidewalk. They are to accompany folks into their immigration hearings in the courtroom as a demonstration of solidarity and support, and I actually have a clip here of what Jackie said when I asked her why she's gotten involved in this movement.
JACKIE: Well, I've been watching what's happening, you know, on video clips and live, and there are a lot of people that are here legally documented, undocumented that are just here to work hard and frankly they're being grabbed by people that my mom told me not to get in a van with when I was growing up.
DINGMAN: So obviously Jackie, very passionate there, she was referring specifically to what she says have been sightings of ICE agents in masks, jumping out of vans and grabbing people and taking them off the street.
BRODIE: So Sam, are there folks there who are also who are there maybe for other reasons, or they're just sort of maybe not go inside but are sort of protesting what what the administration is doing or or specifically what ICE is doing?
DINGMAN: Yes, I had a particularly interesting conversation with a woman named Samantha. She is here for what are being called the rush hour resistance rallies. Those are the ones that the rope barriers have been put up in reaction to. They're here every Tuesday morning at 7:30, and they have actions elsewhere around the city every week and she said she is here specifically in response to the stories that we have seen about ICE agents taking folks after they emerge from their court proceedings.
She said that was the event that made her feel like it was time to get involved, she specifically pointed out that she has undocumented folks in her family who have been in the U.S. for decades and have been, as she described it, law abiding citizens, just raising their families, and she said this is the first time in those many decades they've been here that they feel really terrified about what's going to happen.
BRODIE: So are they mostly just protesting or are they maybe more a little involved than just sort of walking on the side on the sidewalk chanting?
DINGMAN: Well, I would say they've actually been very involved, Mark. Samantha told me some pretty amazing stories. Among other things, she said that something that they have seen happen is ICE agents basically hanging out in the area of the court and following people who emerged from their court proceedings down the street to attempt to apprehend them.
So one thing that Samantha said she and some fellow protesters have been doing is also following those folks down the street, tapping them on the shoulder, alerting them to the fact that there are ICE agents in the vicinity and putting them into ride sharing services and things of that nature to try to get them out of the area.
At a slightly more intense level, Samantha told me about something that she described as a scheme from a movie, like something out of a movie, where she said that, I guess they have heard that ICE agents are often communicating on radios, saying to each other things like, “OK, there's somebody coming out of their proceeding, they're wearing a white shirt.” So what Samantha and her fellow protesters will do is also put on a white shirt so that they can, I guess, hopefully confuse the ICE agents in terms of who they're looking for, try to misdirect them so that again that person leaving from their proceeding can get to safety.
BRODIE: Wow. So Sam, you mentioned that the activity down there this morning was fairly light. I'm wondering if any of the folks with whom you spoke attributed that to the huge rallies around the country this weekend, like maybe there's sort of like a protest fatigue happening.
DINGMAN: Yes, they actually directly attributed the light turnout today to this past weekend's “No Kings” protests. They, Samantha again said that there was a big ramp up to those events, and that she suspects people are a little bit burned out.
I will say though that before we parted ways, Samantha handed me some pretty interesting materials that she is handing out today. One of them is one of those “Know Your Rights” cards that I was mentioning earlier. I'm holding it right here, and it has text on it in both English and Spanish for somebody who is approached by an ICE agent to say.
It says, I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my Fifth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. She also gave me a small purple whistle about the size that would fit on a key chain. And she said she's been taking these around to job sites so that folks on those job sites, if they see ICE agents or suspected ICE agents, can blow them. And the idea is that folks who may be in vulnerable immigration situations, if they hear that whistle, they know it might be time to make themselves scarce.
