Dozens of protesters marched down Henderson’s Water Street Friday night, demanding the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and an end to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The group of around 60 people began their protest outside the Henderson Detention Center, flanked by local police officers who patrolled the area on bicycles. They highlighted ICE’s presence in the community, as one of the agency’s only active detention facilities in Southern Nevada is on Water Street.

As of June 23, 402 people were in a Southern Nevada ICE detention facility: 72 in Henderson and 330 in Pahrump, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

“We’re trying … to let (people downtown) know that the detention center is right down the street and they have their community members in that detention center,” said Crystal Cooper, who leads the local branch of anti-Trump protest group 50501. “I can guarantee you the people here do not know that.”

Stephanie Gentry — a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which organized the protest — said it’s unnecessary to bend the knee to the Trump administration, referring to Metro police’s new partnership with ICE.

The new 287(g) agreement enables officers at the Clark County Detention Center to serve warrants for immigration violations and hold people in the jail for up to 48 hours after their release time for ICE.

Cooper said Metro Police lied about the program, which is the least intensive of the 287(g) models. Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill previously stated the department wouldn’t sign an agreement unless legally required to. 

“People are scared to go to church. People are scared to go to school. I’m hearing it in the community,” Cooper said. “I am a volunteer with the ACLU, so one thing I try to do is make sure our people know our rights so that they are safe.”

One speaker, a PSL member who said his name is Connor, focused the crowd’s attention on the story of Jaime Alanis Garcia. Alanis Garcia, a farmworker in Southern California, died after falling from a greenhouse roof while fleeing immigration enforcement.

Connor connected Trump’s deportation campaign to growing inequities under American capitalism, pointing to rising rents and a “deteriorat(ing)” economy. Instead of addressing people’s needs, he said, Trump targets and puts the blame on immigrants. 

“It wasn’t Jaime’s fault that your wages are low, even if he was working for even lower starvation wages. If workers like Jaime … had easier access to citizenship, they’d be less desperate themselves, and everyone’s wages would rise,” Connor said. “We are played against each other in a race to the bottom.”

Gentry said public sentiment is flipping on Trump’s mass deportation agenda, however. Recent polling from CBS found that around half of the country believes the administration is trying to deport more people than they previously expected. 

Disapproval for Trump’s handling of immigration has also jumped 10 points to 56% between March and July, according to the CBS News/YouGov survey.

“We are actually part of the majority, and there’s definitely a turn happening,” Gentry said. “It’s because of the apparent and just absolutely disgusting amount of violence that our administration is doing toward working-class people, and especially immigrants.”

Despite a significant police presence at the detention center and Henderson officers accompanying the marching crowd on motorbikes, interactions between police and protesters remained minimal.

PSL promoted another anti-ICE protest last month in downtown Las Vegas that turned into a standoff with Metro. After issuing an unlawful assembly order, which the ACLU has said wasn’t audible to all, police used tear gas and less-lethal projectiles on protesters.

Police said people in the crowd had thrown rocks and water bottles. Four officers were injured, Metro said.

“It’s really important to highlight that the violence doesn’t come from protesters. It comes from the police. They at any moment can choose to be violent, and that applies whether it’s Henderson PD or Metro PD or ICE,” Gentry said. “Regardless of that, we have to … stand for change in our community.”