(Photo by Ted Eytan)

(Photo by Ted Eytan)

Activist groups are planning a large rally outside the White House on Saturday, June 30, to protest the Trump administration’s practice of separating minors from their parents at the border. There will be other rallies nationwide that day, though it’s still too early to tell how many and where exactly they’ll be, according to march organizer Karthik Ganapathy.

The Facebook event was created yesterday and already has more than 5,000 RSVPs, with another 39,000 people signaling interest.

“We’ve been seeing an enormous amount of interest on Facebook…people are pissed,” Ganapathy told DCist. He says they’re hoping to make the permitted march as large as possible, but they can’t yet estimate a crowd size because the event was so recently announced.

The rally will take place outside the White House in Lafayette Square at 11 a.m. Ganapathy says they’ll likely have speakers lined up.

Last night, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, formally announced the rally on All In With Chris Hayes. “We see the outrage, and we see that this has to be taken right to the White House,” she said.

The protest is being led by two activist organizations: MoveOn (which Ganapathy is a part of), and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. There are also dozens of sponsoring organizations, including the ACLU and Daily Kos. The rally is a part of the #FamiliesBelongTogether protests, a movement which cropped up in response to the Trump administration policy. The first #FamiliesBelongTogether nationwide protest took place on June 14. Here in D.C., a group of eight House Democrats and hundreds of activists rallied on the steps of the Ronald Reagan Building, which houses the headquarters of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

A number of smaller local protests have taken place, too. A few dozen people rallied Tuesday morning outside the Ronald Reagan Building. A group of multi-denominational religious women have taken up the mantle this afternoon. A separate group of women also entered the U.S. Capitol building this afternoon and nursed their babies in protest of the administration’s policy.

The Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy holds that all unauthorized border-crossers will be prosecuted as criminals. For parents crossing with their children, that inevitably leads to separation. The children are then treated as though they arrived to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors, housed in foster care or government facilities. The practice has drawn widespread criticism, including from America’s current and former first ladies.

Filed Under: immigration, protest,