Hundreds gathered in College Green Park in Iowa City on Thursday evening for the Aquí Estamos March for Immigrant Dignity and Justice. The march, which ended with a rally on the Ped Mall, was a chance for community members to show their support of immigrants and their opposition to Trump administration policies and ICE actions, as especially the agreement between the Iowa Department of Public Safety and ICE in March that created a state police task force to enforce federal immigration policy.
“Today, immigrant workers and families are under attack from the Trump/MAGA offensive, from ICE, from state police, from elected officials pushing their deportation agenda,” Alejandra Escobar, an immigrant from Columbia who has lived in the U.S. for the last 15 years, said, speaking to the people in College Green Park before the march. “Immigrants have become the scapegoats to advance MAGA politics, and yet too many allies are afraid of taking a stand for immigrants or even for themselves.”
Escobar is an organizer with Escucha Mi Voz Iowa, a nonprofit that advocates for and assists immigrants. Escucha Mi Voz organized Thursday’s march.
May 1, or May Day, has been recognized as International Workers Day since the 19th century, and this year there were protests against the Trump administration in cities across the country. There were also protests in Iowa, organized by Indivisible and 50501, in a dozen cities from West Burlington to Storm Lake, but the marches in Iowa City and Waterloo were organized to support immigrants.
In Waterloo, the march organized by the Waterloo Catholic Hispanic Ministry attracted hundreds. The march in Iowa City started in College Green Park, going through downtown streets on its way to the Weatherdance Fountain Stage on the Ped Mall. Marchers chanted “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” “Aquí estamos y no no vamos” (“We’re here and we’re not leaving”) and other slogans.
Speaking in the park before the march began, Escobar reminded the crowd that immigrants are “Americans by choice.”
“We are hardworking, tax-paying people, and as far as I’m concerned, we are not illegal humans,” she said.
Ninoska Campos of Escucha Mi Voz took the stage set up in the park after Escobar to her own story of the harassment immigrant workers face from law enforcement officers. Campos was in a car with three other immigrant workers on April 18, driving from the construction site where they were working to their homes in Iowa City, when they were pulled over by a state trooper who detained them for an hour and questioned them about their immigration status. Campos and her fellow workers believe the stop was the result of racial profiling and the state patrol’s work with ICE.
Campos and the other three workers have filed a formal complaint with the Iowa Department of Public Safety’s Professional Standard Bureau alleging a violation of their civil rights.
“I know I’m not the only one this has happened to,” Campos told the crowd in College Green Park.
When the marchers reached the Weatherdance Fountain Stage, another speaker shared her story immigrating from Honduras, as she and her family fled violence in their homeland and then had to contend with danger and prejudice as they made their way to the U.S.
“I left my country with my three kids, my husband and our lives packed in a backpack,” she said. “We left our families, friends and communities behind. We fled because of the criminals,” and now the Trump administration and other MAGA politicians were treating them like criminals because they are immigrants.
“The only thing we want is to raise our children in a safe community.”
She pointed out that if Trump is able to carry out the mass deportations he talks about, the absence of immigrant workers will bring the country to a halt.
“They treat us immigrants as if we were invisible and disposable,” she said. “We immigrants have this country standing, as we are essential workers of this country.”
All of the speakers on Thursday were assisted by translators, who translated Spanish into English and English into Spanish.
The impact of the fear Trump’s policies and ICE’s action are creating was felt in southeast Iowa this week, as organizers of Washington’s annual Latino Festival announced this year’s festival has been canceled.
“We need to take care of our community members, and it’s almost like we don’t want to do anything that brings so much attention, and brings people there for the wrong reasons,” Latinos for Washington co-founder and President Sonia Leyva told the Southeast Iowa Union. “It’s a family-oriented event, we’ve had it every summer for the last 10 years, people look forward to it … it’s supposed to be something happy, and it’s turned into something that’s just scary. We don’t want to put anyone in danger.”
“No matter your status, no matter your story, no matter your struggle, you belong here,” Iowa City Mayor Bruce Teague said when he took the stage. “We are not here to ask for dignity, we are here to claim it, We are not here to whisper, we are here to be heard.”
The mayor quoted from a special homily on immigration Pope Francis delivered last August: “There are those who systematically work by all means to drive away migrants, and this, when done knowingly and deliberately, is a grave sin.”
“When people are cast aside, when families are torn apart, when fear is weaponized,” Teague added, “that is not leadership, that is a moral failure.”
The mayor concluded by leading the crowd in singing the opening verses of “We Shall Overcome.”
Senate Minority Leader Janice Weiner reminded the crowd of the significance of May 1.
“May Day is the day of workers,” she said. “Remember, it wasn’t the CEOs and billionaires who got us through COVID. It was the nurses, the janitors, the cleaning crews, the grocery and food workers.”
It is these types of essential workers on whom the country truly relies, not the wealthy, she said.
Weiner explained to listeners that the Constitution guarantees everyone in the country, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, due process.
“Every person has a right to their day in court,” she said.
The weather had been threatening rain for most of Thursday, but the sky had cleared before the march began. During the post-march rally on the Ped Mall, a light drizzle began that turned into heavy rain as speeches concluded. People huddled under the Weatherdance stage’s canopy and under umbrellas as a priest said a prayer to conclude the rally.
