Protesters outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday removed an American flag from its flagpole and replaced it with the Mexican flag.
Reports said they also removed a Blue Lives Matter flag and spraypainted the words “Abolish ICE” on it, then hung it upside down next to the Mexican flag.
Officials restored the American and Colorado state flag to their place on Friday evening once the crowd had dispersed.
Reports state that hundreds of people gathered outside the facility where illegal immigrants are housed to protest the ICE raids scheduled to begin on Sunday.
“The majority of protesters on site were doing so in a peaceful and law-abiding manner,” the Denver Post reported.
One of the groups hosting the “March to Close the Concentration Camps” event at the facility was the International Socialist Collective of Boulder, the event Facebook page states.
The socialist group also posted an event flyer to their own Facebook page that is a call to action for protesters.
It reads:
Tens of thousands of refugees/asylum seekers – babies, toddlers, children, and adults – are being brutalized in concentration camps across the US. People of good conscience must come together to stop the dehumanization and abuse of all who are being held in these horrific conditions. Join us as we hold all elected officials responsible for the continued mistreatment of asylum seekers and the separation of families.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is a self-described Democratic-socialist, also continues to describe the holding facilities as “concentration camps.”
However, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, refuted her claims in a tweet on June 19.
“@AOC Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of ‘extermination through labor,” they wrote.
President Trump said on June 22 that he would delay the ICE raids for two weeks in an effort to give Democrats and Republicans more time to find solutions to the immigration problem.
Story cited here.
