Giovanna Castaneda led protesters in Newark on Wednesday who rallied and raged against the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy that forcibly separates children from immigrant families who cross into the southern United States.

“I know what it’s like to have your family separated, because at the age of five my father was deported,” said Castaneda. 

Border agents have swept up more than 700 kids since October. The number of children in federal custody has surged 21 percent under the president’s new policy. And the impact’s felt thousands of miles away in New Jersey, a diverse state that’s home to an estimated half million unauthorized immigrants.

“They want to call us animals. They want to call us rapists. They want to call us murderers. They’ve been calling us criminals for decades. But our humanity is not up for debate,” said Joanna Calle of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

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