By Ted Cox

CHICAGO — Dozens of protesters rallied outside a Chicago hotel Tuesday where U.S. Customs and Border Protection was holding a trade symposium.

“There is no room for Customs and Border Protection in Chicago,” said Mansi Kathuria of Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

“We are here to condemn the actions of CBP, of (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and of the entire Trump administration,” said Ava Garcia of the United Workers Center.

The rally was held outside the Marriott Marquis, 2121 S. Prairie Ave., where CBP was holding a trade symposium on topics ranging from spurring prosperity in Central America to “Key Customs Process Areas That Are Ripe for Improvement.”

Marriott recently announced its hotels would not agree to detain immigrants held by CBP or ICE. But the activists criticized the hotel chain for agreeing to hold the symposium, thus “enabling,” Kathuria said, “the deportation machine that is terrorizing our communities.”

The city has seen numerous immigration protests in recent weeks, including a march involving thousands of people in mid-June, in response to President Trump’s aggressive stance against undocumented immigrants, many from embattled Central American countries, crossing the border with Mexico.

Tuesday’s protest included dolls made up to look like immigrant children and held in cages, as well as crosses and coffins meant to symbolize what Kathuria charged are the 24 immigrants who have died in ICE custody this year.

Tatiana Munoz of PASO West Suburban Action Project also cited the incident last Thursday at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in which CBP agents detained three children who are U.S. citizens for 13 hours in an attempt to draw their parents, who are undocumented immigrants, to the airport. Munoz charged that was intended “to coerce the parents’ deportation proceedings.”

Munoz credited “elected officials who also joined in the fight to reunite the girls with their family” for getting the children released. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot worked behind the scenes to get the children released, and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, who happened to be arriving at O’Hare from Washington, D.C., at the time, confronted CBP officials directly.

Schakowsky called the event “a kind of kidnapping of children by our government.”