Protesters march on Fort Sill to oppose federal immigration policies

LAWTON — For a few hours on Saturday, Fort Sill was thrust into the throes of a heated national debate on immigration as protesters marched to an entrance to the military post.

Hundreds of protesters, who were opposed to housing migrant children at Fort Sill, blocked one of the post’s entrances for more than an hour in a show of force against current federal immigration policies.

The protest included a diverse group of people from six states and various backgrounds.

Taking part in the protest were more than a dozen local and national groups, including members of Native American tribes, Black Lives Matter Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Dream Action Oklahoma, a grassroots group of Japanese Americans called Tsuru for Solidarity and more than two dozen Buddhist priests from across the country.

On a micro level, protesters chanting “close the camps” were opposing federal officials’ plans to place up to 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children at Fort Sill after being detained at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Protesters likened Fort Sill and other detainment facilities holding migrants to concentration camps, a comparison first made by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.

The media, some elected officials and other visitors to border detainment facilities have reported conditions to be unsanitary and overcrowded ⁠— characterizations repudiated by the Trump administration.

Dream Action Oklahoma executive director Serena Prammanasudh said even if conditions are better at Fort Sill, this pattern of placing immigrants in detention facilities is inhumane.

“We’re targeting Fort Sill because even if conditions are a little bit better here, that’s not what we’re ultimately doing and that’s not attacking the root of the problem,” she said. “We are here to close camps across the country.”

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa, previously talked about how the children placed at Fort Sill will be well cared for because the facility has been upgraded since 2014 when it was last used for a similar purpose.

"People who are talking about it don't realize they have a good bed to sleep on, they have good food, they get medical attention — it's better than they had before," he said.

As the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has dropped, the federal government has not yet had to turn to Fort Sill for temporary housing, but Oklahoma’s congressional delegation and state officials will be notified of details before any children are placed there.

Also fueling Saturday’s protest was Fort Sill’s history as an internment camp.

Tsuru for Solidarity, a group of Japanese Americans with ties to internment camps, protested at Fort Sill last month and returned for the larger protest on Saturday.

Michael Ishii, the group’s co-chair, said he flew in from New York City to fight for marginalized communities that are being treated like the Japanese once were when 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps.

Migrant people crossing the border seeking asylum have a legal right to due process and should not be imprisoned, he said.

“We’re here to stand in alliance with other communities that have gone through the same type of history that we have,” he said. “We have shared history and we’re here to stand together.”

On a macro level, Saturday’s protest was part of a larger fight against the federal immigration policies implemented by President Donald Trump in a crackdown on immigration. Some protesters carried signs criticizing Trump or his policies. Protesters also called for eliminating the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Some protesters wrapped themselves in the silver emergency thermal blankets given to children in detention facilities as they marched about half a block to Fort Sill’s Bentley Gate. No one from Fort Sill interacted with the protesters, but local police eventually blocked off the street protesters had overtaken.

University of Oklahoma professor Joseph Thai, who is Japanese American, taught his three children, ages 12, 14 and 16, about internment camps so they have an idea of the struggles their ancestors faced. Thai's children chose to be alongside him at Saturday's protest.

"This is inconsistent with America to separate families and to detain kids," he said. "It's one thing to learn from history, it's another to resist the repetition of history."