Sunset Park

VIDEO: Borough President Eric Adams leads stroller march against family separation policy

June 25, 2018 By Paul Frangipane Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams led hundreds of parents, children and local politicians through the streets of Sunset Park on Sunday in a “stroller march” protesting the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border of U.S. and Mexico.

Some strollers were filled with children on the way to the Metropolitan Detention Center, but Adams pushed a carriage that held a sign reading “No Walls, No Cages.”

“This carriage here, is a symbol of protection, it’s a symbol of nurturing, it’s a symbol of what children represent in America,” Adams yelled in front of the prison, holding the stroller above his head. “When you take a baby out of this and remove them from their mother or their father, you’re destroying the foundation of America and that cannot happen.”

Before marching, the group met at D’Emic Playground on Third Avenue where parents and their children boasted homemade signs.

“We are here because we’re very upset at what’s been going on in this country and it’s horrifying to think of being separated from your kids for a day, let along indefinitely and not knowing where they are,” said local father Adam Grumbach.

The separation policy put in place by the Trump administration has separated more than 2,500 children from their parents at the southern border with hundreds ending up in New York.

The president ended the policy with an executive order last Wednesday, but did not announce a plan to reunite the separated families.

The families were often fleeing violent situations in their home countries and seeking asylum in the U.S.

Adams was joined by other local politicians including Brooklyn Councilmembers Brad Lander and Laurie Cumbo.

“I am a mother,” Cumbo said through tears with her son in a stroller beside her. “You cannot tear apart the critical bond that a mother has to her child. You have crossed a line in a way where there is no going back.”

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