SHAFAQNA – Roughly 200 African Muslims took to the streets in the Bronx this afternoon in cold, rainy weather to “defend the United States Constitution” against President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting travelers from Muslim lands and undocumented immigrants—just hours after U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement confirmed that it had arrested 40 foreign nationals in the greater New York area.
The Muslim and Immigrant Coalition for Justice, which organized the “March Against Muslim Ban,” kicked off the march on 170th Street and Grand Concourse and concluded with a rally at the Bronx County Courthouse at 851 Grand Concourse. The demonstration objected to the White House fiats barring entry to people coming from Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Yemen—temporarily suspended thanks to successive rulings by West Coast courts—and expanding the scope and scale of federal deportation efforts.
“We’re here today to defend the Muslim community and the undocumented,” Bourema Naimbele, a Mali native and one of the founding members of the coalition, told the press during the march. “I’m here to defend the United States Constitution because our Constitution has been violated by one president.”