Protesters arrested at demonstration outside federal immigration office

LOS ANGELES, CA (CNS) - Police today arrested City Councilman Mike Bonin and a handful of other demonstrators who gathered outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in downtown Los Angeles to protest the federal agency's handling of undocumented families entering the country.

The demonstrators began gathering about 9 a.m. outside ICE headquarters at 535 N. Alameda St., and late this morning police declared an unlawful assembly and started to clear the street.

The exact number of arrestees was not immediately clear.

Tessie Borden, a spokeswoman for the protesters, said in a statement that the demonstration was part of "a nationwide call to end the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's immoral separation of families."

"(Last) weekend, people in rallies across the nation protested ICE's policies to separate families and, alternately, to pen them together in isolated internment camps," Borden said. "People of all backgrounds, including political leaders at the federal and local level, are beginning to call for the abolition of ICE."

Bonin said: "When the government rips kids from their parents' arms, opens baby jails, and throws families seeking asylum into internment camps, how does a parent not risk arrest? What's happening is sick and evil, and treating it like a mere policy disagreement is absurd and complicit. For our kids, for our country, and for our humanity, we need to roar and to resist -- with our voices and with our bodies."

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