As tens of thousands of people protest nationwide, about two dozen students and faculty gathered in Washington Square Park Tuesday afternoon to condemn the recent string of violence inflicted by immigration officers — including the killing of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The group later joined hundreds in a march from Foley Square, where about five dozen protesters were arrested.

The protest, organized by NYU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine and Get Free NYC, began at Garibaldi Plaza with student speeches to rally attendees. Demonstrators held banners that read “NO COMPLIANCE WITH TRUMP’S VIOLENCE” and chanted “Money for jobs and education, not for mass deportation.” Some protesters also called for NYU to publicly condemn ICE violence, asserting that the issue is close to the community and should be more thoroughly addressed.

“Right now, it’s just a chilling silence,” Sonya Posmentier, an English professor and FSJP member who attended the protest, told WSN. “We have not heard about many other things that have deeply affected our student body and our faculty. The university has yet to address the sort of omnipresence of violence from the state.”

Demonstrators left Washington Square Park around 5 p.m., marching to Foley Square where they joined over 500 people at an “emergency protest” organized by the New York Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. New Yorkers held up signs reading “KILLER ICE OFF OUR STREETS” and “DO YOU FEEL THE RAGE OF IT YET?” while chanting “Every city, every town, fuck ICE, shut it down” and “We want justice you say how, NYPD out now.”

The crowd of protesters left Foley Square at 6:15 p.m. and marched north on Sixth Avenue until they arrived at a Hilton hotel in Tribeca. They joined approximately 500 more activists from Sunrise Movement — a climate organization campaigning against the hotel chain, claiming it houses ICE agents — and chanted in the lobby, surrounded by about 150 police officers.

At 7:30 p.m., slightly less than an hour after the New York City Police Department ordered the group to vacate the building, about five dozen protesters who remained in the Hilton lobby were arrested. A group of 25 officers in riot gear formed a barricade as they loaded those detained on a bus behind the hotel to take them to One Police Plaza, where NYPD headquarters are located.

At least 50 protesters split from the group about 20 minutes before the arrests, including SDS and NYAARPR organizers, and marched back toward Washington Square Park. An NYAARPR representative encouraged the remaining demonstrators to go rally outside One Police Plaza to show the NYPD that “they can’t just take people off the street for exercising their legal right to protest.”

“I’m very disappointed in how much I hear about the administration and the general lackluster, corporate responses,” Steinhardt sophomore Lily Mecca, who attended the SDS protest, said in an interview with WSN. “People genuinely do not seem to care.”

Tuesday’s protests follow a student walkout on Friday organized by SDS, where approximately 70 students left their classes and rallied in Washington Square Park — also in protest of recent ICE violence. The next day, over 1,000 people gathered in Union Square at a march organized by groups including People’s Forum, 50501 Movement and ANSWER Coalition, similarly in response to Pretti’s death. 

“I’m here to organize against ICE, get ICE out of our city, get ICE out of all the cities in America and abolish them for good,” Oko Kangnigan, a Tandon first-year who attended the student protest, told WSN. “It’s really cold, it’s going to be uncomfortable — just come out to a protest. Donate to the affected families by ICE, post awareness and if you see ICE, say something.”

Alex Woodworth contributed reporting. 

Contact Angela Dong and Justin Yen at [email protected].