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Nationwide protests planned against Trump's immigration crackdown and health care cuts

Nationwide protests planned against Trump's immigration crackdown and health care cuts
MATTER OF FACT. AS OF MID JUNE, 56,000 PEOPLE WERE IN ICE DETENTION. IT’S AN INCREASE OF MORE THAN 16,000 PEOPLE FROM LAST JANUARY. ICE CONTINUES TO CARRY OUT IMMIGRATION RAIDS IN CITIES AND COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY. BUT WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MONTHS AND YEARS AFTER A MASS RAID? 17 YEARS AGO, POSTVILLE, IOWA, A CITY OF ABOUT 2500 PEOPLE, WAS THE SITE OF WHAT WAS THEN THE LARGEST SINGLE RAID IN U.S. HISTORY. OUR CORRESPONDENT, JESS GOMEZ TRAVELED TO POSTVILLE, WHERE SOME IN THE QUIET COMMUNITY SAY THEY ARE STILL FEELING THE AFTERSHOCKS. SUMMERTIME IN POSTVILLE, IOWA, A RURAL COMMUNITY POWERED MOSTLY BY AGRICULTURE AND ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST KOSHER MEAT PROCESSING PLANTS. IT’S A PLACE WHERE YOU’LL SEE A CHURCH, A SYNAGOGUE AND A MOSQUE ALL ON THE SAME STREET. THE DIVERSITY HERE LEADING TO POSTVILLE SLOGAN HOMETOWN TO THE WORLD. YEAH, IT’S READY FOR SOME PIZZA. MOM OF FIVE CASEY JOHNSON AND HER FAMILY’S NEWEST ADDITION, 11 YEAR OLD EDWIN. I DON’T KNOW WHAT LIFE IS LIKE WITHOUT HIM. IS HE LIVING? YES IT IS. CASEY TOOK TEMPORARY CUSTODY OF EDWIN IN MARCH AFTER HIS FATHER FROM HONDURAS, WHO HAD AN IMMIGRATION CASE PENDING, WAS ARRESTED. HE’S SERVING TIME FOR USING FRAUDULENT DOCUMENTS TO WORK AT THE MEAT PROCESSING PLANT. IT WAS MORE OR LESS. HE RAN TO MY ARMS BECAUSE HE RECOGNIZED ME FROM SCHOOL. ME AND MY LITTLE BROTHER. YOU AND YOUR LITTLE BROTHER. EDWIN’S MOTHER AND BROTHER. STILL IN HONDURAS. WHEN I TOOK HIM UPSTAIRS TO HIS ROOM, HE SLEPT WITH THE LIGHT ON. HE WOULD BARRICADED HIMSELF INSIDE SO THE BAD PEOPLE WOULDN’T COME GET HIM. UNEASE SHARED BY MANY IN POSTVILLE WORRIED THAT HISTORY MIGHT REPEAT ITSELF. MY HEART IS REALLY BREAKING. IT WAS THE SCENE OF THE LARGEST WORKPLACE IMMIGRATION RAID IN U.S. HISTORY. IN 2008. NEARLY 400 PEOPLE AT THE MEAT PROCESSING PLANT, THEN UNDER DIFFERENT OWNERSHIP, WERE ARRESTED, AND NEARLY 300 DEPORTED. OKAY. THANK YOU. BARBARA. HERZMANN, WHO VOLUNTEERS AT THE POSTVILLE FOOD PANTRY, WAS A TEACHER AT THE TIME. FATHER AND MOTHER CAME TO PICK UP THEIR SON, AND I NEVER SAW HIM AGAIN. HE WAS GONE. AND AUTO MECHANIC GIORA ABBAS AND ISRAELI IMMIGRANT WORKED FOR THE PLANT IN TRANSPORTATION. I DIDN’T HAVE ANY WORK, YOU KNOW, I USED TO BE BUSY. WE USED TO BE LIKE FIVE PEOPLE DRIVING AROUND. AND IN ONE DAY, THAT’S IT. ZERO HOMES WERE EMPTIED OVERNIGHT AND BUSINESSES SHUT DOWN, SOME FOR GOOD. THE PLANT WENT BANKRUPT. DINARS USED TO BE YOU COULD GO DOWNTOWN 24 OVER SEVEN AND THERE WAS ACTIVITY ALL OVER. AFTER THE RAID, NOBODY. AND WE WENT TO GUANAJUATO. BOB SCHRADER, A FORMER POSTVILLE CITY COUNCIL MEMBER, MET HIS WIFE BLANCA ON A GOODWILL MISSION TO MEXICO. YEARS BEFORE THE 2008 RAID, COMPANIES HERE, THEY ALREADY HAD POSTERS OUT IN MEXICO TELLING THE PEOPLE TO COME HERE FOR WORK. THEY PRETEND THAT WE ARE A REALLY BAD PEOPLE. LAURA CASTILLO WAS ARRESTED IN THE RAID AND THEY PUT SOMETHING HERE IN YOUR DISK, AND YOU HAVE TO WALK LIKE THAT. LAURA RODRIGUEZ, AFTER SIX MONTHS IN JAIL AND YEARS OF WAITING, CASTILLO FINALLY BECAME A U.S. CITIZEN. TODAY, SHE WORKS FOR A NONPROFIT THAT HELPS THOSE IN NEED, INCLUDING POSTVILLE IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY. I KNOW IT’S NO IT’S NO GOOD TO WORK WITH THAT DOCUMENTS. IT’S A FELONY. BUT NOT EVERYBODY IS A BAD PEOPLE. JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ACKNOWLEDGES HOW TERRIBLE IT WAS FOR OUR COMMUNITY. KRYSTAL DUFFY IS THE DIRECTOR OF POSTVILLE COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. SHE SAYS IT TOOK YEARS FOR THE SMALL TOWN TO RECOVER FROM THE RAID, AND IT WASN’T AMERICAN BORN WORKER, SHE SAYS, WHO FILLED MOST OF THE JOBS LEFT VACANT. THE REALITY OF THE ECONOMY IN THIS COMMUNITY IS THAT IT’S ACTUALLY THE IMMIGRANTS DRIVING IT, FOR THE MOST PART. YOU’RE WELCOME. DUFFY ALSO RUNS THE LOCAL LIBRARY, WHICH HAS BECOME A HUB FOR THE CITY’S HEART AND SOUL PROGRAM, PART OF A NATIONAL MOVEMENT TO UNDERSTAND WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO RESIDENTS IN RURAL COMMUNITIES. THE NUMBER ONE RESPONSE WE GOT WHEN WE ASKED WHAT PEOPLE LOVED ABOUT POSTVILLE WAS THE DIVERSITY. HE JUST KIND OF IS ONE OF US. CASEY JOHNSON AND HER FAMILY ARE EMBRACING. BUT WHEN A GAME OF SOCCER WITH A FRIEND. IS INTERRUPTED BY A RARE PHONE CALL WITH BOTH OF EDWARDS PARENTS, IT’S A STARK REMINDER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE. I CAN LOOK AT HIM AND SAY, OH, YOU’RE GOING TO BE JUST FINE, BUT DOES HE KNOW THAT IN HIS HEART, I’M NOT SURE. IN POSTVILLE, IOWA, FOR MATTER OF FAC
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Updated: 5:44 AM CDT Jul 17, 2025
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Nationwide protests planned against Trump's immigration crackdown and health care cuts
AP logo
Updated: 5:44 AM CDT Jul 17, 2025
Editorial Standards ⓘ
Protests and events against President Donald Trump's policies that include mass deportations and cuts to Medicaid and other safety nets for poor people are planned Thursday at more than 1,600 locations around the country.The “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Protests are expected to be held along streets, at courthouses and other public spaces. Organizers are calling for them to be peaceful.“We are navigating one of the most terrifying moments in our nation’s history,” Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said during an online news conference Tuesday. “We are all grappling with a rise of authoritarianism and lawlessness within our administration ... as the rights, freedoms and expectations of our very democracy are being challenged.”Public Citizen is a nonprofit with a stated mission of taking on corporate power. It is a member of a coalition of groups behind Thursday's protests.Major protests are planned in Atlanta and St. Louis, as well as Oakland, California, and Annapolis, Maryland.Honoring Lewis' legacyLewis first was elected to Congress in 1986. He died in 2020 at the age of 80 following an advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis.He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, a 25-year-old Lewis led some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lewis was beaten by police, suffering a skull fracture.Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon Johnson pressed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that later became law.“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said in 2020 while commemorating the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.Chicago will be the flagship city for Thursday’s protests as demonstrators are expected to rally downtown in the afternoon.Betty Magness, executive vice president of the League of Women Voters Chicago and one of the organizers of Chicago’s event, said the rally will also include a candlelight vigil to honor Lewis.Much of the rest of the rally will have a livelier tone, Magness said, adding “we have a DJ who’s gonna rock us with boots on the ground.”Protesting Trump's policiesPushback against Trump so far in his second term has centered on deportations and immigration enforcement tacticsEarlier this month, protesters engaged in a tense standoff as federal authorities conducted mass arrests at two Southern California marijuana farms. One farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic raid.Those raids followed Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard outside federal buildings and to protect immigration agents carrying out arrests on Los Angeles. On June 8, thousands of protesters began taking to the streets in Los Angeles.And organizers of the June 14 “No Kings” demonstrations said millions of people marched in hundreds of events from New York to San Francisco. Demonstrators labeled Trump as a dictator and would-be king for marking his birthday with a military parade.

Protests and events against President Donald Trump's policies that include mass deportations and cuts to Medicaid and other safety nets for poor people are planned Thursday around the country.

The “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action honors the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. Protests are expected to be held along streets, at courthouses and other public spaces. Organizers are calling for them to be peaceful.

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“We are navigating one of the most terrifying moments in our nation’s history,” Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said during an online news conference Tuesday. “We are all grappling with a rise of authoritarianism and lawlessness within our administration ... as the rights, freedoms and expectations of our very democracy are being challenged.”

Public Citizen is a nonprofit with a stated mission of taking on corporate power. It is a member of a coalition of groups behind Thursday's protests.

Major protests are planned in Atlanta and St. Louis, as well as Oakland, California, and Annapolis, Maryland.

Honoring Lewis' legacy

Lewis first was elected to Congress in 1986. He died in 2020 at the age of 80 following an advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, a 25-year-old Lewis led some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Lewis was beaten by police, suffering a skull fracture.

Within days, King led more marches in the state, and President Lyndon Johnson pressed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that later became law.

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said in 2020 while commemorating the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Chicago will be the flagship city for Thursday’s protests as demonstrators are expected to rally downtown in the afternoon.

Betty Magness, executive vice president of the League of Women Voters Chicago and one of the organizers of Chicago’s event, said the rally will also include a candlelight vigil to honor Lewis.

Much of the rest of the rally will have a livelier tone, Magness said, adding “we have a DJ who’s gonna rock us with boots on the ground.”

Protesting Trump's policies

Pushback against Trump so far in his second term has centered on deportations and immigration enforcement tactics

Earlier this month, protesters engaged in a tense standoff as federal authorities conducted mass arrests at two Southern California marijuana farms. One farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse roof during a chaotic raid.

Those raids followed Trump’s extraordinary deployment of the National Guard outside federal buildings and to protect immigration agents carrying out arrests on Los Angeles. On June 8, thousands of protesters began taking to the streets in Los Angeles.

And organizers of the June 14 “No Kings” demonstrations said millions of people marched in hundreds of events from New York to San Francisco. Demonstrators labeled Trump as a dictator and would-be king for marking his birthday with a military parade.