A large anti-deportation protest sweeps through downtown, and signals local opposition to escalating fascism
Above: Flags and signs held by anti-deportation demonstrators in downtown Monday night, with the light of nearby police cars reflecting on them
On the night of Monday, Feb. 3, a large crowd of locals backed up by a sizable vehicle caravan swept into downtown Asheville. Eventually growing to over 300 people, the largest unsanctioned protest this city’s seen this time of year, the demonstrators filled the streets as they headed towards the center of town.
They waved an array of flags — Mexican, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, Puerto Rican — and played music. They were there to openly oppose mass deportations threatened by president Donald Trump, a major escalation in the United States’ already horrendously cruel immigration regime.
Their chants and signs struck a similar tone: “Abolish ICE,” “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” “Immigrants make America great.”
When they filled Pritchard Park, one person shouted “There’s no such thing as an immigrant on stolen land,” to cheering and the crowd followed up by repeating “Fuck Donald Trump” as they made their way towards Pack Square. With music playing the atmosphere was positively party-like.
A ‘Migration is not a crime’ sign held by a protester at the Feb. 3 march
Naturally, the Asheville Police Department responded to the terrible danger of people waving signs and dancing by deploying basically the entire on-duty police force to try to stop it. APD cruisers, blue lights blaring, tore down side streets going the wrong way and tried to block off the demonstration.
At Pritchard Park a line of police cruisers and cops blocked off the area in front of The Restoration, an ultra-gentry hotel whose developers once called for the nearby county health department and social services to be moved across town so their guests wouldn’t have to see poor people. As the crowd marched past one APD officer futilely bellowed from a speaker for them to move to the sidewalk.
A line of APD vehicles in front of The Restoration, an ultra-gentry hotel across from Pritchard Park, during Monday’s protest
Once they reached Pack Square the growing protest completely took over the intersection in front of the giant Arras Hotel, where owner Bill McKibbon once made a notoriously racist speech calling for crackdowns on demonstrations in 2020. The other side of the crowd moved to dance on the former site of the Vance monument, dedicated to one of the architects of Jim Crow and only removed after locals made it clear that if the city didn’t dismantle it they would.
Things stayed like that for about an hour, raucous and joyful. Someone taped a “Know Your Rights” poster to a signpost and had information cards beneath it. The APD crammed nearby streets with vehicles and had lines of cops glare at the protesters. But the attempt at intimidation failed, and the protest ended on its own terms, without any arrests.
A line of APD cruisers blocking off some of the streets leading to Pack Square after the anti-deportation protest took it over
For all the bluster about their supposed power (and the very real danger they pose) there’s already evidence that committed resistance is snarling up the fascists’ plans. Tom Homan, Trump’s deportation czar, has already whined that ICE raids in Chicago faltered in the face of communities committed to protecting their own and educated about how to resist. In Los Angeles, growing anti-deportation demonstrations have repeatedly shut down major interstates and the LAPD has been unable to halt them.
On the local front, popular outrage and resistance has sapped the APD’s numbers (the department’s consistently been down by about 40 percent since 2020) and made it harder for them to suppress large, determined demonstrations like the one Monday night.
The size and strength of this protest was notable, as it hasn’t been seen in Asheville before at this time of year. Unlike events such as the 2020 Women’s March, the anti-deportation protest wasn’t permitted by city hall and the police. When their attempts at intimidation failed, the APD later tried to strike a different tone in their p.r. The next day they posted on social media emphasizing that some of their new patrol vehicle designs weren’t ICE vehicles.
Protest signs in front of a stone wall in Pack Square
Of course, when the APD fails to contain or crush a protest, the non-profit complex usually comes in next. No doubt there will be various figures in that wing of the local establishment who will try to redirect this kind of energetic anti-deportation protest into a more sanitized, less militant direction that those in power can more easily ignore. The purpose of this, as we’ve seen many times before, is not to foster change but to kill it.
On the whole the current escalations of American fascism have ditched the traditional “first they came for…” approach for “wildly attack everyone at once.” While this is still very dangerous and sows a lot of fear, it’s also a lot more brittle than it looks. Relentless defiance, using a wide array of tactics, hits those weaknesses hard.
One thing it also makes clear, starkly, is how connected the struggles of all of the communities under fire are. Many of the same hospitals cutting off care to trans people, for example, also make a point of cooperating with ICE. The same local cops who attacked homeless camps and mutual aid projects would love to carry out deportation raids.
This city has, as people here demonstrated once again in the aftermath of Helene, an incredibly strong spirit of communal care and resistance. That, as Monday’s protest exemplified, offers some real hope. We’re going to need it.
—
Blade editor David Forbes is an Asheville journalist with over 18 years experience. She writes about history, life and, of course, fighting city hall. They live in downtown, where they drink too much tea and scheme for anarchy.
The Asheville Blade is entirely funded by our readers. If you like what we do, donate directly to us on Patreon or make a one-time gift to support our work. Questions? Comments? Email us.