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Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth joined hundreds of women who gathered at the Hart Senate Office Building on Thursday to protest the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy — with her infant daughter strapped to her chest, no less.Duckworth said the administration's family separation practices have deep resonance for her as a mother with a small baby. “What would it be like to have my breastfeeding child ripped away from me?" Duckworth said, according to Washington Post reporter Dan Zak. "This is deeply personal as a mother.”
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The Women's March organized the Thursday demonstration —called "Women Disobey" — which eventually led to the reported arrests of some 100 people draped in foil blankets resembling those distributed to the children currently separated from their parents and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Throughout the rally, protesters chanted "Abolish ICE," "We care," and "Where are the children?" in the office building's lobby, and continued to do so even as they were removed "one by one" by police, according to Zak.The protest delivered on the Women's March's promises last week for a display of "mass civil disobedience," which organizers wouldn't go into detail about at the time in attempts to safeguard demonstrators against arrest. Throughout the week, the march's organizers held direct-action trainings for anyone "ready to escalate" protests against the Trump administration's border policies."The Women's March and our allies are advocating against child camps but we're not advocating for family camps," Women's March co-chair Linda Sarsour told The Hill. "We don't trust this administration to follow through. This administration has not told us how they plan to reunite children who have already been separated from their families."
Other members of Congress including Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal, also participated in the protest, with one photo showing Gillibrand seated and holding hands with demonstrators, adding her voice to their chants."These women are protesting right now this inhumane policy by the Trump administration to separate families at the border, to celebrate nursing mothers from nursing infants," Gillibrand said in a video she posted to Twitter Thursday afternoon. "These women are outraged and they're here to protest until they're arrested. They're not stopping — they're standing up."