AURORA, Colo. — Protests kicked off all across the United States on Monday as part of nationwide "Day Without Immigrants" demonstrations.
People took to the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago and other areas, waving Mexican flags and carrying signs and banners in support of immigrants. Several businesses also closed as part of the movement.
The protests are a response to President Trump's immigration crackdown and deportation policies — part of his campaign promise to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country.
Denver7 stopped by two protests that took place in the Denver metro Monday. One took place outside of Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, an area that has been slated for ICE operations. The other happened outside the Colorado State Capitol.
Adrienne Anderson, a teacher in Montbello who showed up to the Buckley Space Force protest, said she wanted to support the immigrant teachers and students at her school.
"There’s several of us that did 'Day Without Immigrants,' so we did not show up to school, to honor our amazing immigrant staff that support our immigrant students," she said.
"We were all immigrants at some point, my great-grandparents immigrated from Norway," Anderson added.
Denver7 also sat down with CU Denver Associate Professor of Economics Chloe East, who said immigrants are a crucial part of Denver's economy and labor force.
"I think the reason for the protest for the 'Day Without Immigrants' comes from the idea that people don't really internalize how important immigrants are for our community, how many businesses are owned by immigrants, how many workers are immigrants," East said.
"We’ve been seeing students coming to school with their phone numbers written on their arms so that if something happens, they know how to call mom," said local teacher Jarod Sarlo. "We’ve been seeing parents hold their students back from coming to school out of fear. We’ve been seeing teachers unsure of their statuses, unsure if they’d get picked up in something like this."
An 8th grade student, who preferred not to share her name for fear of retalation, said she knows how painful deportations can be.
"My parents are immigrants, it's scary. You never know what could happen, you could go back to a house where no one is there. I’ve been through it, so it hurts," she said, fighting back tears.
East said historically, mass deportations have had detrimental impacts to the economy and that could happen again.
"[Immigrants] eat out at restaurants, they get haircuts, they buy groceries and all of those things help to stimulate the local economy, which helps to create more jobs for everybody, including U.S. born workers," she said.
A study by the American Immigration Council found that the cost deport the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States would cost around $315 billion.
East said that's the same cost as building 3 million new homes in America.
We broke down some key findings from that report in the Infogram below, which can you also view here.
"Businesses will start to close because they don't have the same customers that they had before, and that will lead to fewer jobs in the community as a whole, fewer businesses in the community as a whole, and could lead to more troubles in the economy more broadly," she said.
Anderson said at her school, they essentially had to send a notification to parents to let them know not to send their kids to school on Monday, because they wouldn't have been able to support students without staff members who are immigrants.
"Our country is built on immigration, it's how we thrive, it's how we’re one of the greatest countries in the world," added Anderson.
A recent AP-NORC poll showed half of all U.S. adults said increasing security at the U.S. border should be a high priority for the Trump administration, but most were overwhelming opposed to arresting kids and adults who are here in the country illegally at schools or places of worship.
Denver7 is committed to making a difference in our community by standing up for what's right, listening, lending a helping hand and following through on promises. See that work in action, in the videos above.