Local activists and religious leaders in Coral Springs demonstrated Saturday against the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies as part of a nationwide "Rage Against the Regime" protest.
The protest was organized locally by "Joyful Resistance Indivisible" as part of the 50501 movement’s demonstrations around the country. The name stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement. They helped organize the massive "No Kings" protest in June.
Saturday's protest took place near the intersection of West Sample Road and North University Drive.
READ MORE: From Mar-A-Lago to Miami, 'No Kings' protesters denounce President Trump and his policies
In a statement announcing before Saturday's protest, Joyful Resistance Indivisible said the administrations of President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis are threatening the rights of immigrants by unlawfully detaining them without due process and keeping them under "inhumane conditions" at local detention centers like Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades and Krome detention center in Miami-Dade County.
Christine Calareso Bleecker, an attorney and one of the leaders of Joyful Resistance, said her group is especially opposed to the billions of dollars being given to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency charged with detaining and deporting people in the U.S. illegally.
Trump’s tax and spending law, approved recently by Congress, awarded ICE about $28 billion annually for the next four years, making it the federal government's largest law enforcement agency. The amount is far more than the FBI’s annual budget of about $10 billion and DEA’s $2.6 billion, according to POLITIFACT.
She said ICE has become "an authoritarian regime where cruelty is the point, along with flagrant violations of constitutional rights and laws."
“We are witnessing our immigrant neighbors being ripped from their families without due process, thrown into detention camps with 100+ degree temperatures teeming with mosquitos, unsanitary conditions, and lack of clean water, and then being denied access to attorneys, medical care, and even visits by faith leaders," Bleeker said.
"We must speak out publicly against these illegal, immoral, and inhumane conditions, and we call upon our local, state, and national leaders to end the terror of ICE and the abomination that they cruelly call 'Alligator Alcatraz'," she said.
She added: "This is not who we are as a society. This is not who we are as Americans.”
To learn more about Rage Against the Regime, visit www.rageagainsttheregime.org.