Actress Susan Sarandon, 71, said she was one of nearly 600 women who were arrested during a sit-in to support immigrants in at a U.S. Senate building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday.
Thousands of women marched through Washington, D.C., demonstrating against the government’s migrant detention policy and cases of children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The United States Capitol Police said approximately 575 protesters were charged with “unlawfully demonstrating.”
Police said they were being processed on the scene and then released.
Footage from the demonstration shows women chanting, “We care,” in reference to a controversial jacket first lady Melania Trump wore during a trip to a migrant detention center in Texas.
Many also carried banners with the hashtag #FamiliesBelongTogether.
The women marched 2 miles, past the Trump International Hotel to the Department of Justice, where many sat and blocked access to the building.
Hundreds of protesters, including Sarandon, moved to the Hart Senate Office Building.
Credit: Jacquelyn Martin
Credit: Jacquelyn Martin
Some of them were wrapped in silver cellophane blankets, to symbolize the blankets given to children in migrant detention facilities.
Sarandon, who won an Oscar for “Dead Man Walking” in 1996, announced her arrest on Twitter.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, tweeted that she had also been arrested.
More protests are scheduled for Saturday.
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