When protesters in Portland, Oregon gathered last week to hold a candlelight vigil for the thousands of children who have been separated from their parents along the U.S.-Mexico border, they likely did not expect to ignite a national movement against against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. But in the past week, dozens of cities across the country have followed Portland’s lead, holding Occupy ICE protests and demanding that the agency, which is responsible for carrying out family separations due to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, be shut down.

“Make no mistake, ICE is a white supremacist organization following the orders of a white supremacist administration, and the intent of these policies is to discourage all nonwhite immigration, legal and illegal, and to preserve the power of the rapidly shrinking white majority,” a statement by Portland’s Occupy ICE PDX read. “It is not only possible to imagine a world without ICE, an organization which has only existed for the last 15 years, but necessary and our duty to make it a reality.”

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