At least 30 members of an anti-ICE coalition were arrested during a Times Square protest Sunday, according to police and the group.
Those arrested were among nearly 500 demonstrators with the group Close The Camps who rallied on the steps of the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue around 3 p.m. before making their way to offices for media conglomerate Thomson Reuters in Times Square, according to one of the group’s organizers, Andy Ratto.
The group is demanding the permanent closure of immigrant detention centers that have surfaced across the US — and has specifically called on Thomson Reuters, which has lucrative contracts with the government to allegedly provide immigrant tracking data, to “stop profiteering from concentration camps, immigrant raids, and immigrant detentions”, according to the group’s Twitter.
“Doing business with ICE is collusion with the immigration abuses being committed by our government,” Ratto told the Post. “We will not remain silent as corporations profit from human suffering.”
Reuters has previously said in a statement that it “provides products and services to many parts of the US government in support of the rule law.”
Police arrested 10 men and 20 women, all for disorderly conduct, at the protest.
The M7, M20, and M104 buses were halted for several hours as a result of the rally.