ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

ICE presence in the Southwest Kansas region last week inspired multiple protests in the area, including in Liberal. This coming Saturday will see another protest in Liberal to continue protesting recent ICE actions.

The protest will start at 4 p.m. Saturday at the Hutch's location at 850 S. Kansas Ave. and as coordinator TJ King tells it, the protest is necessary to help spread the message against recent actions of ICE.

"We will be marching all the way down Kansas Avenue, and like our last march, we'll be going right in front of the Mark of Beauty salon. From there, I'm going to see if we can try and get a permit to be able to go back in front of Braums again. We got a permit last time to be able to go on front of prompts, but this time I have to speak with some local people to figure that part out," King said. "Seeing children being pulled out of school and not knowing what's going on is what bothered me the most, and that made me want to make this happen. It should go without saying, these are children, and they don't fully understand what's going on, and they should have been left out of all of this. The children who were pulled out, they weren't pulling out all those children to tell them 'Your parents have been taken into custody' or something like that. There is definitely a better way to go about this, and I'm here to help try and figure out a better way to go about everything. That was my final push, for sure."

King added there will be precautions in place to keep the protest peaceful.

"Like I said before, we will be keeping things peaceful, and we won't put up with anyone destroying property or harming anyone or anything like that," King said. "Before we get going, I will remind everyone of their rights because, as far as I'm concerned, they can say whatever you want as long as they're not threatening anybody's life or overall well-being. You can hold your phone up as much as you want in a public area and record as much as you want, and I'm not too worried about that, but the part I am worried about is when it gets more physical. I will emphasize to everyone who shows up, do not touch anybody, do not spit on anybody, do not push anybody, do not damage any property, or you will be asked to leave. We were able to keep things pretty civil with the last protest, and I want to keep that trend this time around. We want people to understand here that we're not just out here being loud and causing a ruckus and being a nuisance to the community."

King said he hopes to see high turnout and community support.

"Anyone and everyone is welcome to come out support our message. As I said with the previous protest, I'm not encouraging anyone to go out mess up anybody's property or hurt anybody. We're coming out here to get a message out and to be heard by the community," King said. "And after we protest, I want everybody to educate themselves on how we can prevent ICE from just pulling people over randomly in Liberal because doing things that way doesn't help anyone. And from what I've been seeing in the news lately, it doesn't seem to matter if someone's Black, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, etc., they're pulling just about anyone and everyone over. There was a story I heard about a doctor in a different state, a Caucasian male working as a doctor who got maced and then shot and killed by ICE agents, and they later admitted he was not who they were looking for. After everything that happened, I expect to see a lot of people there to support each other. We're all human, and it doesn't matter how big or how small you are, or what color you are. We should be treated like humans, not less than and that's the message we want to get out. I say it's time for us to go out, exercise our rights to the fullest, and after that, let's educate each other on how to make lasting changes."