San Jose community members gathered at Plaza De Cesar Chavez Park on Monday to participate in “A Day Without Immigrants”, hosted by non-profit group Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN).
SIREN works to “empower low-income individuals and communities” through civic engagement, legal services and leadership development, according to its website.
Jose Servin, SIREN advocacy and communications director, said the event aimed to convey solidarity with San Jose’s immigrant and undocumented population and gain support for the closure of immigrant detention centers.
“There are only five detention facilities for immigrants in the state remaining, and we’re slowly shutting those down,” Servin said to the crowd. “We actually got to population zero at the nearest one in Yuba City. We got everybody out, there’s no more immigrants there.”
The protest began, Servin said in an interview, when Carlos Eduardo Espina, 23, created a viral TikTok about being an undocumented immigrant in America.
The Facebook group Espina created surrounding A Day Without Immigrants, or “Un Día Sin Inmigrantes” in Spanish has over 95 thousand followers, and has influenced hundreds of A Day Without Immigrants protests across the nation.
Espina has 2.5 million followers on TikTok, and his videos have generated over 200 million views.
Servin said that while SIREN has become part of the many protests, online organizing has made the protests more accessible.
He also said that the forced migration of millions of Mexican, Central and South American immigrants is largely due to policies created by the United States and other powerful countries, which affected the economies of nations like Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.
“A lot of forced migration has happened because the regions where the people live, if you're talking specifically about Latin America, their economies have been destroyed and a lot of it has to do with the intervention of countries like the U.S. or countries from Europe,” Servin said.
He said these economic policies, combined with America’s immigration policies and a lack of immigration reform, have left millions of people in America undocumented.
“The last time that we had major immigration reform was 36 years ago, and between that gap, there's literally 11 million people who have been left out of any form of relief, and any form of ways to fix their status,” Servin said. “So they're stuck in this legal limbo.”
Luis Aquino, SJSU political science and philosophy junior, attended the event to achieve better representation for their families and community.
“My parents are immigrants and they come from an immigrant community, so this is something that’s close to my heart,” Aquino said. “Any way that I can support, I’ll show up.”
