Thousands of people, including in San Diego, rallied against the Trump administration’s immigration policies and mass firings of federal workers as part of the “hands off” demonstrations. NBC 7’s Shandel Menezes took a look at the turnout in downtown San Diego.
Thousands of San Diegans at events across the county joined the nationwide movement on Saturday to push against President Donald Trump's administration.
In at least one downtown rally, the San Diego Police Department estimated at least 12,000 people showed up to Civic Center Plaza to push back on Trump administration policies, including spending cuts, mass layoffs and other moves made during his first months in office.
In a telephone interview, Richard Cannon of Indivisible North County said Saturday's march announces that "people are paying attention, people are motivated and they're not going to wait around for their elected officials to save them," he said.
"We're going to out into the streets and make our voices heard regardless if our representative want to hold town halls or not," Cannon said. "We just see this as the first significantly large event in a very long line of events that we're going to plan all year."
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Along with thousands of residents, two U.S. House representatives from San Diego -- Democrats Sara Jacobs and Scott Peters -- were in attendance, Cannon said, adding that the march also included state Assemblyman Chris Ward, local organized labor officials Brigette Browning and Crystal Irving, and noted local community activists.
Cannon said there may have been one or two agitators at the march, but volunteer peacekeepers were on hand to de-escalate any situation.
"I didn't even see hecklers, which is kind of surprising," he added.
There were two medical emergencies related to the march including a case of heat exhaustion, according to the SDPD.
Cannon earlier told City News Service that "things (were) going great" a half-hour into the march. "Looks like a really good turnout, great vibe," he wrote in a text message.
In an Instagram video post, Rep. Jacobs described the San Diego crowd as "incredible, it just kept going."
"I am just feeling so incredibly inspired," said Jacobs, who represents the 51st Congressional District, adding that she said she heard stories about what the budget cuts mean to people and their lives.
"I'm ready to go back to D.C. and to keep fighting and to keep making sure we are doing everything we can from Congress, while working with everyone who made their voice heard today to push back," Jacobs said.
According to the SDPD, which handled some traffic control downtown, the march had been peaceful.
Another protest in Encinitas was peaceful as of early Saturday afternoon, according to the San Diego County Sheriff's Office. Other rallies were set to take place in Carlsbad, Oceanside, Rancho Bernardo and Borrego Springs.
In his two-and-a-half months in office, Trump has signed 111 executive orders. It’s more than half the amount he signed during his entire first term, according to the Federal Register.
Among the most controversial orders have been him enacting mass deportations, withdrawing from the World Health Organization and ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Yusef Miller with the North County Equity and Justice Coalition said he wants Trump to leave these initiatives alone.
“When you have areas that don't have a real good appreciation for our Indigenous brothers and sisters, people of African descent, people that are Latinx, people who are Jewish, who are Muslim, and things of that nature, that breeds division, incompassion and when absent, that's where we have strife and struggle between people,” he said.
Trump administration
Jan Brown said “hands off” her son’s healthcare benefits.
“Our son has a life-threatening form of epilepsy,” Brown said. “He’s developmentally disabled. He’s got autism, Tourette’s syndrome and he has anxiety. If they take his benefits away, it's going to be devastating. The option is either has these benefits and he's stable with the right time to go, or he's left the street to cross. A place to succumb to his life because he can’t function.”
Other protestors want hands-off social security, clean energy and tariffs, but not everyone agrees.
“I support his tariffs,” said Robert, who didn’t want to share his last name. “I do think that the other countries have been laughing at us for a long time, you know? We should have retaliated a long time ago.”
Robert said he voted for Trump. “I would say he's deviating a little bit, but I wouldn't say he's a complete failure.”
The White House has assured Americans that this era of turbulence is needed to steer the country in the right direction, but that it’s temporary. Protestors counter that temporary has already gone on too long.
President Donald Trump has yet to personally comment on what organizers were calling a "mass mobilization day," but the White House rescheduled one of its annual spring garden tour dates Saturday due to the large anti-Trump demonstration expected to take place near 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
"Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to USA Saturday. "President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers across the country who overwhelmingly re-elected him."
