Shocking video has captured the moment priests and nuns were put into zip-tie handcuffs after being arrested for protesting the Trump administration’s detention of migrant children on the U.S. southern border.
The clergy members were among 70 Catholic activists who descended upon the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. on Thursday for the protests.
Activists from more than a dozen Catholic organizations chanted the names of children who have died in detention facilities during Trump’s term in office as they railed against ‘the immoral and inhumane practice of detaining immigrant children.’
Several of the protesters lay on the floor of the building’s rotunda in order to make a human cross before it was dismantled by officers.
70 of the assembled were subsequently arrested for ‘unlawfully demonstrating in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building’, Roll Call reports. A 90-year-old nun was among those arrested.
Video posted to Twitter by one eyewitness shows officers escorting priests and nuns from the premises.
Several recited the Lord’s Prayer as they were led away.
‘All were charged with D.C. Code 22-1307, Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding,’ a police officer told Roll Call in an emailed statement.
0 of the assembled were subsequently arrested for ‘unlawfully demonstrating in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building’, Roll Call reports. A 90-year-old nun was among those arrested.
Video posted to Twitter by one eyewitness shows officers escorting priests and nuns from the premises.
Several recited the Lord’s Prayer as they were led away.
‘All were charged with D.C. Code 22-1307, Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding,’ a police officer told Roll Call in an emailed statement.
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Meanwhile, Washington Post reporter Marissa J. Lang tweeted an image of 90-year-old Chicago nun, Sister Pat Murphy, who was arrested during the sit-in.
‘Sister Pat works with migrants and refugees in Chicago, and has been holding a weekly vigil outside ICE there for 13 years. She says the treatment of migrants should outrage all people of faiths,’ she tweeted.
Thursday’s Catholic demonstration was the second consecutive day that religious groups had protested against the Trump administrations immigration policies.
On Wednesday, 10 Jewish activists were arrested after staging a sit-in at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C.
President Trump has come under intense scrutiny for his response to the ‘crisis on the southern border’.
Detention facilities in the region are overcrowded and have been criticized for their ‘inhumane’ standards.
This year alone more than 530,000 people – including upwards of 40,000 unaccompanied children – have been apprehended at the border in the six months since January.
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