Where It All Began: the JFK “Muslim Ban” Protest and the Origins of I-ARC

By Camille Mackler, I-ARC founder and Executive Director.

They say that history is made by people who show up. I never gave much thought to that cliché - until it proved very try in my life. Speeding down the Van Wyck Expressway on the frigid morning of January 27, 2017, I had no real idea what I was driving towards. My friends - one in the passenger seat next to me, the other two on a group text thread - were frantically texting and calling everyone we knew to get them to join us at the airport. I was trying to focus on the road, while at the same time explaining to my boss on speakerphone what we were attempting to do, fighting to be heard over the sounds of his son’s soccer game in the background, and my friend’s furious talking aloud as she typed.

It had only been about 12 hours since we heard the news of the Muslim Ban, the decision by the newly inaugurated Trump adminstration to ban people from entering the United States from a handful of countries they deemed dangerous. I was pushing open my office’s glass doors on my way out when I got the alert on my phone that it was happening, and as I walked down Sixth Avenue towards my daughter’s day care, I went back and forth with an official from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at JFK Airport. 

“What does it say? Does it name the same countries from the draft we saw earlier this week? When does it go into effect?” I kept asking. 

“I don’t know. We don’t know. We haven’t seen it.” The reply kept coming. 

I ignored the steady stream of incoming calls that kept buzzing in from journalists, lawyers, advocates, and friends, all asking the same questions I was shouting into the phone, a finger in my ear to try to hear better over the rush hour traffic, the honking of cars, the loud chatter of other people’s conversations.

It was Friday night,  January 27th, just before 6PM. The sky was pitch dark, as only it can be in January in New York City, but the avenue was illuminated by street lamps, store fronts, and the headlights of the cars inching their way North, on their way home, or to better weekend plans than mine. I was more tired than I had ever felt. Only a week before, Donald J Trump had been inaugurated president. Only six days before, millions of women and allies had marched in streets around the country in a historic show of public protest. After holding our breaths for two months, my colleagues and I had spent seven days taking blow after blow, watching the slow and certain dismantling of all the gains we had made as we had fought for immigrant rights over the last two decades. We knew the Muslim Ban was on the horizon, but as Friday came to a close, we thought we had gotten a week’s reprieve. We were wrong.

“Don’t worry, Camille,” Frank’s (my contact from CBP) voice came over the phone. “You know how slow Government works. We still need to get the language. We need to get guidance on how to implement it. We need to train staff before it can go into effect. We have time to figure this out.” 

Frank and I had worked with each other for years. We agreed on nothing. From sports allegiances to career paths to politics, we were on the opposite ends of every spectrum. But we agreed on treating people with respect and dignity. And that had been enough common ground to form an unlikely professional friendship over time.

As we sped down the highway to the airport, his words echoed in my ears.

Back on January 28th, it had only been about two hours since I woke up, groggy from too little sleep on the seventh night of an already sleepless week.  By habit, I grabbed my phone from the nightstand. This time, the New York Times news alert told me two men had filed a lawsuit after being detained overnight under the new ban. I was instantly alert, scrolling for Frank’s number in my recent calls. He picked up on the second ring. 

“What happened to ‘we have time’?” I asked before he could even get to a perfunctory “Hey Camille.” 

“We got the order at 10PM last night to put it into effect,” he said, in a flat tone indicating the same lack of sleep I had endured “I didn’t have time to call you.” 

We sat in silence on our respective ends of the phone conversation. “What now?” I finally managed. 

“I don’t know,” he replied.

My daughter had a playdate with a friend who lived in Queens, NY by JFK airport. Because I didn’t know what to do, I got in the shower and got ready to take her. I felt broken. After nearly 15 years of fighting for immigrant rights, the attacks on communities I had defended in and out of courtrooms were personal. In a bathrobe and slippers, my hair wrapped in a towel, I paced back and forth in my apartment. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and left it on the counter, untouched. I ground coffee, then forgot to put water in the machine. As the news sank in, a picture became clearer – family and friends waiting at airport gates for loved ones that weren’t coming through, fear mounting because they were in the custody of a now fearsome enemy: the U.S. Government. 

I couldn’t get to the people who were being detained by Customs – the people who had been banned when they were mid-air, unaware of the new rules that would be in place when they returned to the ground, even though those same rules had not existed when they left it, and were intercepted as soon as they landed on American soil. The US Constitution does not guarantee you a right to a lawyer when you haven’t yet officially made it into the country. And at any rate, you never have the right to a lawyer in immigration proceedings. But I could get to those families and friends who were waiting there scared, and unsure of where to get answers.

I picked up my phone, opened Facebook, and wrote one sentence: “I’m going to JFK airport to see what’s going on, lawyer friends DM me if you want a ride.” I wrote the same sentence in an email and sent it out over the listserv of hundreds of immigration lawyers that I managed. I ran around, getting dressed, packing up my daughter to drop her off along the way. 

Forty-five minutes later I’d rethought my purpose. I went back to Facebook and wrote another post. “Update – we’re going on a fact-finding mission. Non-lawyers welcome to join.” Three friends responded. One I would pick up along the way, the other two would meet us at Terminal 4.

I picked up my daughter and as I opened the door turned to my husband. “If I get arrested, I’ll try to let you know.” And then I ran down to the garage.

As we drove, I could feel the tension in the car mounting. My friend Jacki and I strategized on who to call in for reinforcements. We spoke to Tara and Yasmine, each making their separate ways to the airport, and compared notes. One had spoken to a few members of Congress, the other was getting official sign-off for a protest from her leadership. I offered to call the New York Times while I drove, because what’s one more thing to juggle when I was already juggling twenty? Zoë, all of two years old, fell asleep in her car seat, oblivious to the commotion around her. Once she was safely at her playdate – me already turning around to run back to the car as I thrust her in my friend’s arms telling her I would try to be back soon – panic was setting in. We speculated about the scene we would find, tapping our fingers nervously as the minutes to ETA wound down on the GPS screen. Should we call the Lawyers Guild in cases there were arrests, we mused? Was there anything we could do, from a legal standpoint? Had we forgotten anyone who should be alerted?

By the time the tires screeched into the open-air parking lot of Terminal 4, our minds were racing. The last few miles were a blur of weaving in and out of cars on the highway, making last minute turns as we found our way around the airport, and finally stopping on a dime as I pulled into a spot and we tumbled out of the car. Jacki had found a couple of pieces of cardboard and we quickly scribbled “Refugees Welcome Here” with sharpies before sprinting to the terminal doors, hearts pounding.

As we ran, we imagined crowds of confused and scared persons within, children crying not knowing where their loved ones were, government officials shouting orders. My mind, always in lawyer mode, reviewed the different sections of the immigration laws, trying to find creative arguments to make to undoubtedly gruff and impatient customs officials who would, I was sure, have zero interest in hearing what I had to say. Finally, we burst through the sliding doors and stopped short, almost knocking each other down to the ground.

Terminal 4 was entirely, almost post-apocalyptically,  empty.

In the background, tinned music came from the ceiling speakers. Fluorescent lighting bounced off the white linoleum floor. A homeless man slept on one of the metal benches arranged in a seating area in front of a Dunkin Donuts booth. A couple of people stood at the double doors that led from baggage claim, under the big board announcing flight arrivals. They kept checking their watches, seeming bored.  In the middle of the building, a replica of an old school diner, shaped like a train car with metal siding and bright red counters, stools, and booths inside, had set up some tables around its perimeter. Tara sat at one of them eating eggs. Yasmine was not there yet. 

A lone reporter came over. “Is this it?” 

“This is it,” Tara replied, taking another hearty bite. 

The neon of a giant flatscreen above the double doors welcomed us to the Big Apple. Behind it, we could see the AirTrain regularly pulling in, discharging and onboarding passengers one level above us before heading on its way.

As we stood there, disoriented, out of breath, and unsure, I saw two women walk past us. They wore the pink hand knit pussy hats everyone had made for the Women’s March a week before, and held protest signs. They passed us without a second look. I peered off into the distance, to the other end of the terminal, watched a janitor push a mop and bucket on a cart, and tried to focus on two small specks in the distance. As I stared, the specks grew larger, walking purposefully towards us. They grew closer and I recognized them as two local Congressional representatives: Nydia Velasquez and Jerry Nadler strode up to us, accompanied by a couple of people I recognized as lawyers from a local nonprofit who, I was fairly sure, represented the two men named in the lawsuit. Nydia saw me and strode right up. 

“Where are they?” she demanded, in her Puerto Rican accented English. 

I had thrown on jeans, Chuck Taylors, and the first coat I had found in my closet, barely taking time to brush my hair. Nydia was in a full pants suit, with heels, pearls, and perfectly arranged hair. Her indignation made her look far taller than I had ever seen her. 

“Over there?” I said, pointing to the double doors through which I knew all arrivals would come out of, half shrugging at the same time to indicate that in fact, I had no idea.

We all trooped over to the doors, which swung open to let a furtive looking tourist out. Nydia and Jerry wasted no time – they strode through and shoved their Congressional ID cards into the face of the very large Customs official who, gun on hip, had rushed over to tell them they were not allowed. Jerry stepped in front of the doors to prevent them from closing while Nydia furiously insisted on being allowed to meet with the detained men and the lawyers furiously argued to be allowed to see their clients. Slowly they edged inside, until the doors closed and only Jacki, Tara, and I, along with the two bored people still waiting there, stood staring. The music resumed. Jacki, Tara, and I looked at each other and, in unison, we lifted our signs and started chanting “Let Them In! Let Them In!” After a minute we stopped. Our two pink-hatted compatriots had decamped to the Dunkin’ booth for coffee. 

Unsure of where to go next, we walked back onto the parking lot, where a group of about 30 news outlets by then had assembled. The three of us tweeted and Facebooked what was going on, and then took turns standing in front of the press gaggle with our signs, taking photos. We kept making calls. We started asking lawyers to come out too. Yasmine eventually arrived. My boss called asking for an update, and I told him to send more staff. 

About half an hour later Nydia, Jerry, and the lawyers emerged. The press closed in on them as they gave an update. The government wasn’t budging but neither were they. As I tried to listen, I turned around. Suddenly, I realized, a hundred New Yorkers had joined us in the parking lot. Half were wearing pink pussy hats, holding signs that had clearly been repurposed from the many protests that had taken over the streets since the election last November. Tara – the only real organizer amongst us – started leading chants. I lost track of Jacki and Yasmine, instead walking around, answering reporters’ questions, and live streaming videos. 

At some point it started to snow. I ran back to the terminal to use the bathroom, hoping to run hot water on my hands, but found out we had been locked out. Some stranger reached out on Twitter asking what we needed. 

“Coffee and hot chocolate,” I typed back. “They’ve locked us out of the terminal!”

 More local politicians arrived. A cart containing hot beverages magically appeared. The crowd continued to grow – we were maybe at 200 strong at that point. Suddenly, everyone was singing “This Land is Your Land”. I took out my phone and rolled video, knowing I would want to remember that moment forever.

Eventually, the Terminal doors were reopened and I shuffled in, desperate for some warmth. My phone, which had been buzzing with alerts, notifications, and messages all morning, went off once more. It was Frank. 

“Camille, you’re about to get some news that will make you very happy,” he wrote.

I walked toward a side door I knew led to Customs, wondering if I might be able to convince him to come and out and talk to me. Instead, I saw Nydia, Jerry, the attorneys and a reporter I knew standing around a very tired-looking man. I asked who the man was. “That’s Hameed Darweesh. One of the two men in the lawsuit. They got him out,” Will, the journalist, replied. 

Nydia and I locked eyes and, instantly, fell into a hug, tears coming down both our faces. We asked Hameed what he wanted. “A cigarette!” he replied. So we all walked out of the terminal together. As we crossed the road and stepped into the parking lot, somehow, the 500 New Yorkers that had congregated there by then erupted in cheers and started chanting “Welcome Home!” I don’t know how they knew who he was, but they knew his journey was over.

As the day wore on, it all became a bigger blur. The weather got colder. The parking lot filled with hundreds more - and then thousands - of New Yorkers. To escape the freeze – because Chuck Taylors are not the best fashion choice for an impromptu protest in the middle of winter – I started going from terminal to terminal. In each one, I saw people – many of them my friends – holding up signs at the arrival gates: “Immigration Lawyer. Do you need help?” Others sat criss crossed on the floor in tangles of wires, typing up federal court submissions furiously on their laptops while scared family members hovered closely by, giving what details they could.

I found a stale sandwich at a food stand and sat in a plastic chair in Terminal 8, staring at the TV monitor mounted high on the wall above me. As by some seemingly unwritten airport rule, it showed CNN. I watched the images of protests around the country, of Muslim Americans being interviewed soundlessly, and of a huge crowd of people taking over a parking lot and a six story parking structure. It took me a while to realize that that was here, where I was, at JFK airport. That the parking lot I had stood on a few hours before, empty but for the press gaggle and my friends and I taking photos, was now the scene being played over and over again on news broadcasts around the world.

My phone kept buzzing but it wasn’t journalists or advocates anymore - because they were all here with me by then. It was friends and strangers on social media asking how they could help, reposting my updates. It was the head of the Port Authority and the Counsel to the Governor. At one point a colleague called me frantically telling me they had shut down the AirTrain, which allows people to travel between terminals, so I spent 15 minutes untangling that. I explained immigration law over and over again to every official that called with a question, while directing the hundreds of lawyers that were reaching out to the various arrival gates as best I could.

When I got back to Terminal 4 and walked through the sliding glass doors, I was almost knocked down by the sound. The roar of the crowd, chanting “No Ban No Walls No Raids,” was deafening. Night was starting to fall, and five thousand New Yorkers stood crammed on the parking lot and hung signs on every level of the parking structure next to it, all shouting their anger and refusal to accept a policy that, up until 8 hours before, had felt like a foregone conclusion. As it became dark outside again, I managed to fight my way to the back of the crowd. The lights from the Terminal, with its floor-to-ceiling windows two stories high, made it sparkle. I could see the neon of the big welcome sign inside through the glass.  All around its outside perimeter, Port Authority officers had shown up in riot gear, but it didn’t deter the protestors. Cars and taxis drivers honked their support. Uber drivers went on an hour strike to show their solidarity. More Congressional representatives showed up, each going in and negotiating the release of one or two more families. 

Around 8PM a group of us, all staff at various immigrant advocacy organizations, huddled together. We had been keeping tabs on each other all day through ever growing WhatsApp groups. We decided to do an impromptu press conference, and announce a rally at Battery Park the next day. By then, I was ready to hand over the baton, so I found a couple of lawyers to become the point people for anyone who wanted to come during the night. As I made my way back to my daughter and then to home, a friend called me to let me know a Federal Judge had granted an injunction in the two original cases that had sparked everything. Pulling out of the terminal lot, I knew I wouldn’t be at Battery Park the next day, marching with the 30,000 New Yorkers that would eventually come out. I would be here, making sure everyone else got the same rights. 

Ten days later, I was once again driving away from Terminal 4. It was sunset this time, but it was still cold. I had been there every single day since the protest, leading an increasingly more organized legal team effort to monitor conditions and help anyone impacted by the Ban. I had gone home just a few hours each night to sleep. Some days, I drove into the City to get my daughter at daycare and bring her back with me. Two days before, another Federal Judge had issued an injunction, this time nationwide and total: the Muslim Ban was done, at least for now, and I had spent the morning watching jubilant families reunite, crying as I saw little children run to their mothers, balloons everywhere. A young man named Sean waited with an airport bouquet of roses for his fiancée to finally arrive. I had argued with an airline who wouldn’t board a diabetic mother in her 70s who had been stuck in transit in Casablanca since the ordeal had started. 

I hadn’t had much time to reflect on the events of the past week and a half, but I knew they were extraordinary. Advocacy is always planned. Rosa Parks was chosen to sit on that bus. So was the little girl who ran to give the Pope a letter. Advocates negotiate with police before acts of civil disobedience. But the NoBanJFK protest was not remotely planned - instead, it was an organic coming together in one of the most beautiful ways I had ever seen.

The events it set into motion truly changed the course of my life, leading to new approaches at work, which in turn led to new opportunities. Eventually, it would redefine how I approach my personal fight for immigrant rights. But of course, I didn’t know that then.

I drove away from the airport, the sky streaked pink, gold, and purple over Jamaica Bay. As I merged off the Van Wyck, the news broke on the radio. Coordinated raids of homes and businesses by immigration authorities in multiple states had resulted in hundreds of undocumented migrants being arrested that afternoon, including in New York. It was time to get back to work.