SEQUIM — In the space of two hours Saturday afternoon — during near-horizontal snow, sleet, wind, rain — this town saw a demonstration by about 100 U.S. Border Patrol supporters and, a few minutes’ drive away, 40 protesters singing songs and speaking against the Border Patrol buildup on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Along Washington Street, Sequim’s main drag, there was a lot to read.
At noon, dozens of commercially printed signs saying “Illegal aliens are illegal”; a handmade “Deport them! Employ me!” placard and an extra large “[Heart] your job? Thank the Border Patrol” lined the sidewalks near Wal-Mart.
This was the rally organized last week by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps vetting officer Hal Washburn of Olalla, Kitsap County.
Ninety minutes later in the heart of downtown, amid pelting snow, it was “Stop the detentions, no human is illegal,” “Workers united for immigrant rights,” and “Don’t trade humanity for patriotism.”
This was the demonstration — planned for several months — by the Stop the Checkpoints committee based in Port Angeles.
Braving the weather
Participants traveled through the gathering storm from Port Townsend, Diamond Point and Seattle.
The Stop the Checkpoints group formed last year in opposition to the Border Patrol’s road blocks on U.S. Highway 101 near Forks and Discovery Bay and on State Highway 104.
The checkpoints, which led to the deportations of illegal immigrants, have since given way to Border Patrol agents boarding buses traveling across the north Peninsula.
David Brookbank Sr. of Gig Harbor came to Sequim on Saturday to express support for the Border Patrol’s arrests and detentions of people who’ve come into the country illegally.
The undocumented workers are taking jobs away from U.S. citizens, he said.
“I’ve met people out here,” on Washington Street, “who’ve been laid off,” Brookbank said, adding that he has two grown daughters who are unemployed.
Brookbank, a member of the Minuteman corps, also has a son who’s a social worker with experience in Mexico and El Salvador.
“He doesn’t like me doing this,” Brookbank said. “He and I disagree” on immigration enforcement policy.
American flags whipping around him, Brookbank added that “a lot of people call us racist. We’re not. We don’t sling slurs. We’re really out to just stop the illegal aliens, and stop our employers who refuse to follow the law,” by hiring workers without legal status.
Later in the afternoon, as the snow kept coming, the Stop the Checkpoints group took up their posts at the corner of Sequim Avenue and Washington Street.
“We’re fighting for human rights, not just American rights,” said Kate Franco of Port Townsend, one of some three dozen protesters who stood for 45 minutes on the sidewalk.
“If you’re illegal, get out of here!” a passing motorist screamed, as members of the group waved the flags of Canada, Mexico and El Salvador.
At 2:15 p.m. the Stop the Checkpoints group marched three and a half blocks to Pioneer Park, where they stayed for another 45 minutes of discussion and song.
“The basic right is the right to exist,” said Chris Smith, who carpooled from Seattle to attend the Sequim protest.
He held high the Salvadoran flag, in honor of immigrants who come to the United States from war-ravaged countries.
Immigrants, illegal and legal, “come here to work, to get what they need to live,” he said. “They come here because they want to exist.”
The United States, in its wealth, should take care of people, citizens or not, Smith added. “We need a system that will provide enough for everybody.”
Depleting resources
Back at the Minuteman rally, Betty Meehan of Sequim said illegal immigrants are depleting U.S. resources by using hospital emergency rooms and sending their children to public schools.
She believes such immigrants should be turned away from classrooms, and that the Border Patrol’s enforcement of immigration law “should be even stricter than it is.”
Her friend Lonnie Pollard, a Sequim resident and longtime member of the Minuteman corps, added, “We’ll be fighting for law and order. We’re prepared to fight the long fight.”
The Stop the Checkpoints protesters at the other end of town were every inch as resolute, holding out their signs as the snow turned to rain.
“We are trying to keep our families together,” said Alberto Tinoco, who held a placard reading “Stop the raids and deportations.”
“Our migrant workers are working hard,” added Franco, the Port Townsend woman who joined the march to the park. The Border Patrol’s detentions of illegal immigrants, which lead to deportation, “are inhumane; they are the extreme in cruelty.”
Lois Danks, a leader of the Stop the Checkpoints group, circulated a petition calling for a reduction in Border Patrol funding and an end to “racial profiling” on the Peninsula.
Sue Docekal of Seattle, who spoke for the Port Angeles and Seattle chapters of Radical Women, saluted the protesters, who included members of the Port Townsend Peace Movement and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“You’re uniting the community,” she said. “That’s why [the Minutemen] are coming. They’re worried. So keep it up.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
