Indian-American lawmaker arrested for protesting against Trump’s immigration policy

Washington, June 30: Fifty-two-year-old US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the first to be elected to the US House of Representatives, was arrested in Washington on Thursday, June 28, while holding a protest against the Donald Trump administration against its zero-tolerance border policy which has adversely impacted several families by alienating children from their parents, PTI reported.

Born in Chennai, the Democrat lawmaker who was elected to the House in 2016 from Washington State, was arrested with 500 other women at the Capitol Hill.

"I just got arrested with a group of over 500 women who took over the center of the Hart Senate Building, protesting the inhumane and cruel zero-tolerance policy of Donald Trump and this administration, the separation of families, the caging of children, the imprisonment of asylum seekers," Jayapal was quoted as saying by PTI.

Jayapal was arrested on the floor of the Hart Senate Office Building, Washington DC, after she participated in a sit-in to protest the Trump administration's immigration policy which has earned severe criticism both at home and abroad.

She said the issue was "far beyond politics" and "about right and wrong", PTI added, saying she would take to the streets on June 30 again.

Also in a video posted on Twitter, Jayapal said she was proud that she got arrested with people who believed that the US is a better place, the PTI report added.

Jayapal, who is seeking a re-election in the mid-term elections in November this year, is among the several voices who have slammed the Trump administration for its controversial policy of separating the children of the illegal migrants detained at the US's southern border with Mexico and legally dealt with.

The Trump administration had first tried to blame the Democrats for the chaos but later, in the face of a backlash, took a backtrack with the president signing a nee executive order to reverse the decision of separating the children from their families but the damage had already been by then.