Airports nationwide swarmed by protests against Trump immigration ban

From Boston, to New York City to Los Angeles, crowds, including politicians, bearing signs and posting to social media expressed their support of those people who were barred entry into the U.S. with Trump’s stroke of the pen on Friday.

It all started Saturday morning at John F. Kennedy International Airport when lawyers two refugees filed a writ of habeas corpus in the Eastern District of New York in an effort to get their clients, two Iraqi refugees released after they were detained upon landing.

One of the refugees, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who worked on behalf of the U.S. government in Iraq for the past 10 years as an interpreter for the U.S. Army following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was released Saturday afternoon.

The fate of the other refugee, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, was not immediately clear. It was reported that up to 11 refugees were still being detained at JFK Saturday evening when a federal judge granted a temporary stay to halt Trump’s executive order, shielding travellers with a valid visa.

After Darweesh was released and addressed reporters at the airport, saying that all the support he received since news broke out of him being detained shows “the soul of America,” the crowds of protesters began to gather at JFK.

Well known figures like liberal filmmaker Michael Moore helped galvanize people to show up to what he called a “big anti-Trump protest” that was “forming out of nowhere!” He later live streamed throngs of people protesting at Terminal 4 against what Moore said is Trump’s “Muslim ban” — a label Trump has pushed back against.

“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over,” Trump told reporters Saturday while signing executive orders in the White House.

The president signed two executive orders Friday, one which suspended issuing visas to seven Muslim-majority countries and barred refugees from entering the U.S. for 120 days in order to give the Trump administration time to evaluate its vetting process; it’s all a part of an effort to install what Trump called “extreme vetting” of immigrants.

Throughout the day and the evening, protesters began showing up at other airports such as Logan Airport in Boston, attended by the likes of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Protesters also gathered at LAX Airport in Los Angeles where a two-day vigil for refugees and immigrants is being planned.

Pictures and video posted to social media showed demonstrators also gathering at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Dallas Fort Worth Airport and San Francisco International Airport, among others.