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Families Belong Together rally in Lambertville Saturday draws large crowd

More than 200 area residents rallied at the North Union Street Park in Lambertville Saturday as part of Families Belong Together demonstrations scheduled around the country to protest the government policy of separating migrant children from their parents and failing to reunite them.

The Families Belong Together “Day of Action” included more than 710 events in all 50 states and an anchor protest in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.

Sponsored by Indivisible Lambertville-New Hope, the Lambertville rally drew an enthusiastic, vocal crowd from 9 to 10:30 a.m. as temperatures surged past the 80-degree mark on their way to the mid-90s.

The group demanded that the Trump Administration permanently end the practice of family separation and immediately reunify those that have been separated.

“ICE must release parents immediately so that the Office of Refugee Resettlement can reunify them with their children,” Indivisible Lambertville-NewHope said in a statement. “Children and families deserve due process, not indefinite imprisonment. Children do not belong in baby cages and internment-like camps. Family incarceration is not the solution to family separation.”

 

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Charlie Sahner

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy." - Einstein

26 Comments

  • If you got rid of the border baby law- where an ILLEGAL can pop a baby out in the US and the baby is an automatic citizen, then it would elimante seperating families. You’d just deport them all together. Problem solved. These people know what their doing is illegal, but they don’t care. No they are finally paying the price.

  • I thought it was an important and useful rally on Saturday. It is good to know we have folks working in our local community to raise awareness for the current blight of Immigrants trying to come into the USA. Trump’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy should rightly be considered child abuse / torture. Apparently a California judge thought the same thing!

    • Stop using a broad-based term to push your liberal agenda. Legal immigrants have always been and always will be welcome. Illegals come here well, illegally.

      Luckily, many can now see through the liberal smoke-screen of convenient language choices.

      When do I get to claim ‘Mental duress’ from liberals? I want my safe space.

    • Well, Diane, I’ll start with this. While I do consider illegal immigrants a “blight” on our nation, I think you meant to refer to their “plight.” That being said, bottom line? I do not care about the “current blight(your word) of immigrants” that they knowingly imposed upon themselves. They come here poor, uneducated, speaking no English and with no skills. Now my tax dollars have to deal with them. I don’t want to hear that all people “are equal & welcome.” All people are not equal to the true American that values freedom, our culture & hard work. Those illegal aliens, of whom there are MANY, are not welcome. I don’t want to hear about how your “feel good” rallies are advocating for their rights. They are not citizens and are not entitled to the rights that go along with that citizenship. Don’t preach to me about human rights. They endanger their children themelves by embarking on their journey. Poor parental decision-making. Again, not my problem.

      • Actually, non-citizens, including those without documentation, *do* have constitutional rights. Always happy to debate policy, but let’s stick to the facts.

  • What part about ILLEGAL do people not get? If you break the law you pay the price. Simple.

    Where is the outrage for the parents incarcerated every day in the US who are separated from their children? Oh yeah, they may not all be potential Democratic voters so they do not matter.

    Stop the grandstanding. Call them what they are…illegals. Punish them for breaking the law like any other self-respecting country would. If you are not here illegally you are not separated. Get it? Don’t break the law.

    This is not a recent problem. Read…plenty of presidents on both sides had the chance to address this and did not.

    Now it’s a feel good rallying cry for the left. Good luck.

    • Nope; not new. Asylum-seekers have been coming to this country for many years, and *that is not illegal.* What’s new is the “zero-tolerance” policy and the insistence that every family must be separated, which is a) very expensive; b) a foolish diversion of scarce resources away from drug interdiction; and c) a human rights violation. That’s worth speaking up about, don’t you think?

      • Families are only separated if crossing the border illegally. This is not seeking asylum. Asylum seekers may go to a legal point of entry to claim asylum and they will not be separated without committing a crime. The only change is the charging of the adults that knowingly break the law and put their children in harm’s way to illegally enter the country. When adults go to jail, their kids don’t follow. This happens every day all over the country.

        • There is no law requiring asylum-seekers to use a designated point of entry, and crossing illegally is a *misdemeanor.* Am I to understand that people who support separating parents and children who cross illegally would also support separating parents and children in cases of, say, theft of cable services? (Yep, that’s a Class A misdemeanor in Texas.)

      • Please try reading a post before commenting.

        Separation does not occur for asylum seekers. It occurs for those who choose to enter the country illegally.

        Again. Follow the process and you are not separated. Break the law and you pay the price.

        Very simple logic. Read before you post

  • I was at today’s Lambertville rally. I left after Falcone. Too hot for me. But I showed up.
    Separation of children is an ancillary result of our poor immigration policies. We should be screaming for a fair and comprehensive immigration policy. Dems are also at fault as well as Reps. We need immigrants. They need us. One of our American ideals is to be a refuge for people who need to come here, like my parents from Russia. Yes, keep out the bad guys, but don’t define bad by race, religion or nationality.

    I will follow Cindi’s advice to be informed, to harass our representatives, and to vote and encourage to vote in November.

    Nice rally.

    Ira Friedman

    • This is the message you walked away with from this useless rally. “Harass our representatives.” Definition of harass: to annoy persistently; to create an unpleasant or hostile situation especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct. No one reacts positively to harassment. Just the opposite. Ira, Indivisible & Maxine Waters, three peas in a pod creating hostile situations. Very productive. Civility is dead.

      • Sandra, asking our elected reps to take action on what WE believe is not useless. Getting them to pay attention in a respectful way is civil. The discourse during the creation of our constitution was full of passion. Just as we are. For true American values where everyone is equal and everyone is welcome. There is enough.

    • Funny how Liberals always leave the word “illegal” out of their conversations about past and present immigrants, even on TV. Most people don’t have any problem with any people coming to our country as long as they come here legally and they are vetted so we know who they are. I am not a fan of Trump by any stretch, but you are all fools if you think people don’t know this is about hating Trump and hurting his presidency. If it wasn’t you all would have stood up when Clinton, Bush & Obama did little to nothing to fix these problems. They dumped this mess into the future. This has been going on for decades. Why doesnt every marcher across the country take a few of these families into your homes and support them to help them and to help ease the tax payers who pay for everything?

  • OK, you’ve done your “virtue signaling” for the day. Still time to pack up for the shore, go tubing with the kids down the river or make reservations at some high end restaurant in town. Feeling smug are we? The demographics of the New Hope, Lambertville, Solebury area are such that NONE of these issues have any chance of making an impact on your lives. It just “feels” good to get out there and rally. Indivisible, you are laughable.

    • Thank you for this comment. I’d like to respond, speaking only for myself, to your question and to comment on one point that you made.

      First, my answer to your question: No, I am not feeling smug. I am feeling enraged that our elected leaders would implement so vicious and abusive a policy as separating children from their parents (please familiarize yourself with the lasting damage that can do, if you don’t already know), and that my own representative has been silent about it, despite repeated extremely civil phone calls to him. I assume he is a good human and is revulsed by this policy, but “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” and that is what he is doing. I cannot stay silent while such outrage is being carried out in the name of my country, and is given a pass by our elected representative.

      And second, my comment: You are correct that few people locally will be affected by this policy. But a) the people who are affected are being denied the opportunity to advocate for their rights, so we are trying to speak for them; and b) while it’s not this policy, it might be the next policy, or the one after, that does affect us locally, and if we’re not willing to speak out on behalf of others, who will be there to speak out for us when our rights are threatened? That’s why we’re called Indivisible — we’re all in this together.

      Our next community meeting is July 8 in Lambertville. We wecome all who want to attend in a spirit of respect. Thank you for the opportunity to respond.

    • Just so you know the American activists making democracy work in Indivisble come from all walks of life, are not paid, put their money where their mouths are, are are working to make this country be one we can once again be proud of. I am sure there are people in this town that are Directly impacted by the racist and fascist traitor occupying the white house and this evil immigration policy. What are you doing to improve America?

      • Your message is not very uniting, in fact, it is clearly divisive. Baseless accusations, attempted shaming, double standards and intolerance of others’ opinions are why people, from all walks of life, are fed up and voted for Trump. You are helping his 2020 campaign.

      • “Indivisible . . . working to make this country be one we can once again be proud of.” (Editor’s note, Elycia: Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.) I, for one, have never stopped being proud of this country. You lost an election so you feel your pride has been stripped away? There was a recent 8 year period I wasn’t very happy, but I was always proud to say I was an American. I am pretty sure I will not be proud of the country that Liberals/Democrats want to create with open borders & lawlessness. Just so you know, the name-calling, so indicative of low-level debate, defines you. Happy 4th of July and MAGA!!!

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