A rally outside Cincinnati City Hall and subsequent march to condemn the Trump administration's aggressive immigration policies drew hundreds Friday evening.
Attendees joined similar events across the country supporting protesters in Minneapolis pushing back against a large surge by Immigration and Customs Enforcement there.
The January 7 shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in that city has drawn widespread attention and condemnation. Despite sub-zero temperatures, thousands in Minneapolis filled streets downtown Friday and hundreds of businesses closed in protest of ICE's ongoing presence in the city.
Cincinnati's event was also frigid, with temperatures dipping down into the low teens and a persistent wind chilling attendees. Organizers with groups like Socialist Alternative, The Party for Socialist and Liberation, Democratic Socialists of America, the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers and others spoke from the steps of city hall. Speakers focused on encouraging the crowd to join local efforts to provide mutual aid and security to immigrants and protesters like those seen in the Twin Cities.
"One rally, no matter how powerful, will not shut down the deportation machine," Socialist Alternative's Jordan Engelke told the crowd. "The power to stop this system comes from the organized, collective power of us. Minneapolis is showing us the way forward."
Following the speakers, attendees marched from City Hall to near downtown's John Weld Peck building and back. One of them was Larae Dean, who grew up in Minneapolis and still has family there.
"My sisters still live there, so I'm getting first-hand information about what is going on," she said. "I can't even believe my home state and city has erupted in this kind of chaos. There's always been a wide diversity of people I grew up with and loved. I want that Minneapolis to stay. It's so devastating."
Dean said seeing a big crowd come out in Cincinnati was heartening. She moved here in the 1980s for college.
"I'm just glad there are great humans here who are willing to join in for a just America for all of us," she said.
Beth and Neil Yoke were also marching. They said they'd seen the fear Trump's immigration policies have caused first-hand.
"I volunteer for a nonprofit and a lot of new Americans come to the food pantry there, and there's been a steep dropoff because they're afraid to leave their houses," Beth Yoke said. "So they're not getting the food they need."
The Trump administration has said its aggressive tactics are aimed at deporting "the worst of the worst" criminals without immigration status. But a large percentage of those detained so far, including locally, haven't had violent convictions or charges outside of immigration offenses.
The administration has ramped up recruitment of ICE officers, offering $50,000 bonuses and sometimes using slogans reminiscent of white nationalist language. The Department of Homeland Security has sent roughly 3,000 ICE agents to Minneapolis, arresting hundreds, including some U.S. citizens and children as young as five years old. Some experts have expressed concern those agents could be violating the Fourth Amendment and civil rights laws with their tactics.
DHS and the Trump administration have said Good's shooting by ICE agent Jonathan Ross was self-defense and that Good intended to hit him with her car. Many critics, however, point to multiple videos of the incident that seem to contradict some of the administration's claims.
Greater Cincinnati hasn't seen the same surge in ICE agents the Twin Cities has, but has been the site of several high-profile detentions, including that of Egyptian immigrant Ayman Soliman and others.
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