Protesters march against Trump's immigration policy

Allison Thompson, a 49-year-old lawyer, drove to Washington, DC, with a group from Fayetteville, North Carolina. She said she’s a registered Republican and that this is her first protest.

“As soon as I heard about the march, I told my husband, ‘I’m going. I don’t care where it is,'" Thompson said.

As a mother, she said, hearing about the administration’s practice of separating immigrant families shook her to her core. She thinks of her 9-year-old and 12-year old son and how traumatized they would be in a similar situation.

Carrie Amabile, 38, of Fayetteville, traveled with Thompson and said this is also her first protest. She toted a sign that said “Love thy neighbor.”

Her two daughters are at home in North Carolina, but Amabile said before she left she made sure to tell them why she was going to protest today.

Singer Alicia Keys and actress America Ferrera, speaking at the rally in Washington, DC, read letters from a mother and grandfather who were separated from their children.

Keys brought her 7-year-old son Egypt to the march and shared her frustration over family separations. She read a letter from a mother whose son is being held in a facility in Oregon.

Ferrera, whose parents are Honduran immigrants, read the story of a grandfather who is hoping to be reunited with his granddaughter. She encouraged the crowd to listen to his words and imagine themselves in his situation.

"This fight does not belong to one group of people, one color of people, one race of people, one gender. It belongs to all of us," she said. "What makes humans remarkable is our capacity to imagine. We have an imagination. Let's use it."

Crowds of protesters are rallying in Chicago to protest President Trump's immigration policies. It's an exceptionally hot summer day, and many of the demonstrators have clustered in the shade of trees as they wait to start their march.

One protester described what's happening with the immigration debate as "a battle for the soul of the country."

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This family traveled from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Washington, DC, to visit the White House, but they were denied.

So they decided to march and deliver this message: "I really do care, do you?"

Mike Ickowitz, 39, said he believes Melania Trump's jacket was deliberate, so he and family are "sending one right back." (The first lady wore a jacket with the words "I really don't care. Do u?" on the back before as she boarded a plane to tour an immigrant children's shelter.)

They tried to explain to their kids what was going on, so they can "imagine what it would be like if they were taken from us."

She said as people of privilege, "we have to speak for the marginalized" people.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the Broadway musical "Hamilton," just sang a lullaby to a crowd of protesters gathered in Washington, DC.

"We're here because there's parents right now who can't sing lullabies to their kids. And, well, I'm just going to sing a lullaby that I wrote and this is for those parents. And we're not going to stop until they can sing them to their kids again," he said. 

He went on to sing "Dear Theodosia," a lullaby from "Hamilton."

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Rep. Joe Kennedy III, a Democrat from Massachusetts, addressed a crowd of protesters in Boston.

Kennedy vowed to fight Trump administration's immigration policies, saying the US will not accept "children locked in those cages."

He added: "We will win. We will win. It might not be today, but it will be tomorrow. We will win. Thank you for being here. Stand up, speak out, keep fighting."

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, speaking to demonstrators in Boston, criticized President Trump for his immigration policies and called for an overhaul of the US immigration system.

"This is ugly, this is wrong, and this is not the way to run our country," the Massachusetts lawmaker said. "The President's deeply immoral actions have made it obvious we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and values."

Warren recently visited a processing center in McAllen, Texas. After touring the immigration facility, she described the scene as a "disturbing picture."

"They are all on concrete floors in cages," she said. "There is just no other way to described it."

MacKenzie Banks, 19, of Lubbock, Texas, had a question for the administration: "If these children lived in my uterus, would y'all start caring."

"I am protesting in DC today because I cannot turn a blind eye to the clear human rights abuses brought forth by this administration.

At the protest in Washington, four kids read letters they wrote to detained children who have are separated from their families.

"You haven’t gotten to see much of America yet, but there are so many different types of people in America. I really hope you and everyone else get free, and live a happy, playful life like a kid should," one girl read. "People may argue that there are good reasons for us, but there are not. There isn’t even one good reason. Me and my mom won’t stop protesting until everything is right."

Another girl had this message for children at the border:

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