RIO GRANDE – Between 30 and 40 people stood up for immigrants’ rights in an hour-long protest Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 5, at the intersection of routes 47 and 9, one of the busiest intersections in the county.
People of varied ages held up signs that read things like “Abolish ICE,” “We love our immigrant neighbors,” “We the people are all immigrants” and “Stop the hate.” Some signs were written in Spanish, with phrases like “Estamos Contigo,” which translates to “We are on your side.”
The protest was organized by Cape May County Indivisible, an activist group that Sandy Bove, a protest leader, said stands for “social, racial and environmental justice.” The group was inactive for most of 2024, but Bove said that Wednesday’s protest marks the first of many actions it will take in 2025.
Bove said that Cape May County Indivisible is passing out pamphlets and cards across the Cape to help immigrants and business owners know their rights in the event of an ICE confrontation.
She held a megaphone and led protesters in chants as vehicles whizzed by. Many protesters declined to comment, wore face coverings and generally expressed concern about the hostility they might face from those sympathetic to the Trump administration.
One truck driver stuck his head out his window to yell: “Go back to Mexico then b—–, if you like it so much. This is Trump country.” Remarks like that were common during the protest, but just as many drivers “friendly honked” and showed support for the group, Bove said.
The demonstration took place on the same day as nationwide protests against the Trump administration, unified under the hashtag #50501, but none of the organizers at the Rio Grande protest linked their effort to the wider movement.
Kit Marlowe, from Lower Township, told the Herald that he showed up to express frustration with the Trump administration’s asylum freeze.
He told the Herald: “I want to protest the Trump administration’s heavy-handed enforcement of immigration policy. It violates the policy of asylum that several international treaties obligate us to observe. We must comply with contracts we sign; treaties are contracts among nations.”
Other protesters spoke of “immigrants” in a broad sense. One woman, who declined to give her name, said she is visiting the Cape to check in on her second home and wants immigrants to feel safe. Another protester, when asked why he showed up, simply said, “Isn’t it obvious?”
Kirsten Ewing, owner of a tattoo shop in West Cape May, said that the Trump administration’s rhetoric makes immigrant communities, legal or otherwise, feel unwelcome. She compared the rhetoric and actions of ICE to Nazi Germany and said that at least 20 vehicles had heckled or yelled at the protest group in some way since the action began 45 minutes earlier.
Ewing said that Trump’s call for the largest deportation campaign in American history is “aggressive, dangerous and dehumanizing.”
“I’m trying to support local immigrants – they’re our neighbors,” she said. “I want to make other people curious about helping their neighbors.”
Contact the author, Collin Hall, at chall@cmcherald.com or by phone at 609-886-8600, ext. 156
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