Dozens of community members gathered in Port Washington Sunday evening for a march, vigil and a call to end alleged violence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here to remember those who are dead and to plead for justice on behalf of those who are incarcerated or threatened right now,\u201d said Stan Lacy, of Port Washington.<\/p>\n
Advocates say more than 60 individuals have died in ICE detention centers or during enforcement activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s becoming more and more dangerous,\u201d said Dave Chapman, who has been protesting for over a year now. \u201cPeople are literally dying in our streets, and we need to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement to News 12, the Department of Homeland Security said there has been no spike in deaths. They say death rates in custody have remained consistent over the past decade at 0.008% of the detained population.<\/p>\n
Still, Sunday people came together to honor their memories and call for an end to the violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s like another sort of fear that it’s going to happen here, that it’s going to happen to one of the people in this community that we love,\u201d said protest organizer Stacey Mellus.<\/p>\n
The evening started with speeches demanding accountability.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople shouldn’t even be forced to leave just because they’re afraid that the government is going to take them for no reason,\u201d said 12-year-old Miguel Ulloa during a speech to the Port Washington community.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other day, an ICE agent showed up and were waiting at the door. And I was playing soccer with my friends in my street, and we all ran hiding. That’s how scared we are,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Advocates marched down the street protesting ICE and ended the night with a vigil filled with songs of resistance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so sad what we\u2019re here for,\u201d Mellus said. \u201cBut it gives me so much hope to see just all of these people together and supporting each other.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dozens of community members gathered in Port Washington Sunday evening for a march, vigil and a call to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-306234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}