Correspondent photo / Sean Barron Chris Flak, an activist from Youngstown, holding sign, and her partner, Sean O’Toole of Youngstown, were among those who marched five blocks from the Mahoning County Courthouse to the Mahoning County jail on Sunday to call attention to the deportation, detention and disappearance of many immigrants and to honor them, as well as to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials’ actions against immigrant families.

YOUNGSTOWN — Chris Harris has no intention of taking what she strongly feels is the mistreatment of maany immigrants sitting down, so she decided to stand up and march.

“Our inspiration for this event is our moral call to defend the marginalized, the oppressed in our midst, and to stand up for the immigrants in jail and being held, and to support their friends and families in this difficult time,” Harris said.

As part of her efforts to do that, she organized a peaceful five-block march Sunday afternoon from the Mahoning County Courthouse downtown to the Mahoning County jail to protest the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who have arrested, detained and deported many immigrants in a manner the marchers feel deprived them of fair treatment and judicial equity. The gathering also was to demand due process, dignity and justice for all, regardless of immigration status.

Sunday’s local march and protest also was part of a nationwide “Disappeared in America: Weekend of Action,” which was a two-day coordinated series of vigils, protests and events across the country that thousands of people attended to demand an end to the President Donald Trump administration’s ongoing campaign of detentions, deportations and disappearances of immigrants and their families.

The Youngstown Interreligious Prayer Group for Immigrants organized the local protest and march.

En route to the jail, participants laid flowers outside of the door to the Mahoning County commissioners’ offices, as well as additional flowers on a grassy area near the jail. Many of the marchers took umbrage with the commissioners’ decision to approve a federal contract with ICE to house some immigrants at the lockup, where, the protesters contend, the inmates are being held without due process.

As of Friday, the jail has 87 ICE inmates and 132 prisoners that U.S. marshals arrested, Sheriff Jerry Greene said Sunday.

Greene added that he couldn’t understand why a public outcry and complaints were lacking when ICE inmates were being housed at the jail between 2007 and 2009. He also called the controversy today “a political football.”

Earlier this year, Greene said he expected the federal ICE contract with the jail to generate between $4 million and $4.5 million for the county annually, and that it will pay the county $125 per inmate per day. The Mahoning County jail would be able to comfortably house 570 such inmates, he said at the time.

Harris blasted what she sees as ICE’s indiscriminate rounding up of immigrants, many of whom were going about their daily lives such as heading to work, taking their children to school and following proper procedures to become U.S. citizens, including showing up for court hearings and meetings.

Some immigrants have been held at the local jail for months with no criminal charges against them, a situation that continues to take a toll on the inmates as well as their families and loved ones, she added.

“These are not dangerous people,” Harris said.

Among the protesters was Anne Sparks of Athens, who has volunteered to assist asylum seekers since 2019. She carried a sign that stated in large uppercase letters, “Bring them home now!”

Underneath were the photos of three immigrants to which the inscription referred: Heidy Sanchez, a Florida mother of a 1-year-old child who was deported in May to Cuba; Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian-Palestinian immigrant and Columbia University activist against the Gaza war who was held for three months in a Louisiana immigration facility; and Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was illegally deported March 15 to El Salvador.

In her remarks, Vicki Vicars, operations director for Thrive Mahoning Valley, said she met the Rev. Gary Graf when he was in Youngstown on Saturday. Graf, a Chicago Catholic priest who is part of the Priests for Justice for Immigrants organization, is on an 800-mile pilgrimage from Dolton, Illinois, to the Statue of Liberty in New York City and is seeking to enlighten what he and many feel is the truth of what is happening to countless immigrant families in the U.S. Dolton also is the boyhood home of Pope Leo XIV.

“The cornerstone of our faith and all others flows are values, and central among those values are compassion, humanity and helping others. What is now happening to immigrant families in the United States, and especially to children, is an assault on those foundational values of people of all faiths.

“This pilgrimage is intended to mobilize Americans from every state to demand that compassion, humanity and helping hands be restored to the immigration process,” Graf and the Priests for Justice for Immigrants said in a joint statement.

Much of Sunday’s march and protest consisted of song and prayer, in which Janet Cobb, a member of the Mahoning Valley Freedom Fighters organization, read aloud the 23rd Psalm that states, in essence, that God walks among those who face trials, tribulations and darkness, and that he will provide for them in many ways.

Musical selections included “This Land is My Land” and “Holy Place.”

At the end of the event, many participants signed petitions that Cobb plans to take with her to Washington, D.C., calling for elected representatives to stop ICE’s actions.