Kids join protest in Newport against family separations at border

Laya Young went to her first protest Thursday.

The 7-year-old stood at the corner of Irvine Avenue and Dover Drive in Newport Beach with a sign that declared, “We don’t want to get taken away anymore!”

Laya was among about 150 people who gathered for a rally at Mariners Park against the separation of migrant children from their parents as they cross the Mexico-U.S. border. The protest was organized by several activist groups led by HB Huddle.

The separation issue continues to grip the public as questions are raised about how the children already put in scattered detention camps — while their parents are prosecuted under “zero tolerance” policies for allegedly entering the United States illegally — will be reunited with their families since President Trump signed an executive order halting the separations.

Laya, a U.S. citizen, isn’t facing that situation personally, as her mother, Brooke, reminds her. But Laya defended the choice of words on her sign, written in pink and purple marker with a sad face for emphasis.

She’s a child, just like the kids in the detention centers, she said.

“I don’t want kids taken away, ’cause that’s a bad law,” Laya said.

The driver of a car stopped at a light honked in support of the crowd’s signs and chants. Then a young girl rolled down her window and waved from her booster seat.

Brooke Young said her children — Laya and her brothers Jackson, 11, and Lukas, 9 — fear family separation will apply to her too when she takes a trip to Spain soon, although she is a U.S. citizen.

“‘What if they take you away? What if they don’t let you cross back?’” Young said her children have asked her. “They think families are just torn apart at the border.”

Anna-Lisa Larson said she took her daughters, Annika, 9, and Nora, 7, to the evening protest to expose them to more of what happens outside their Orange County “bubble.”

Annika, a shy girl with large brown eyes who hung back at her mother’s elbow so she could whisper in her ear, didn’t speak loudly, but she expressed her thoughts clearly.

“Their parents go to jail and the kids go to cages. Kids should be with their parents and they shouldn’t be separated,” she said. “I cried when I was at my grandma’s just for a few days.”

Maria Changsek’s daughters Kami, 5, and Kaylee, 11, waved signs while her year-old son Joaquin chewed on his fingers as he nestled against his mother in a yellow sling.

Changsek said she thinks of how her children would fare in detention without her. Kami has severe food allergies. Joaquin is still breastfeeding.

“I’d feel really alone and scared,” Kaylee said. “I wouldn’t want to go through what other people have gone through.”

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD