SALT LAKE CITY — Car horns honking could be heard up and down the streets in front of the Governor’s Mansion on Saturday, where many Utahns were gathered to protest the ICE Detention Center that's set to come to Utah.
The crowd was made up of people of all ages, including 78-year-old Denys Koyle.
“We could walk to this one, and it is important. We are so upset with how things are,” she said.
Other seniors from Park Lane Senior Living Center also walked to the protest, despite needing their walkers and canes to get there.
“People go, 'Why are you going?' I said, 'Because we need the numbers, we need the press. We need people to know what's going on,'” Koyle said.
Sarah Buck with Salt Lake Indivisible feels the detention center and recent decisions made by the current administration are inhumane.
“It shows an incredible disconnect from the people of Utah, as well as a lack of leadership. Not only should this detention center not exist here; there shouldn't be any in our United States,” she said. "It knows no boundaries, and it's shocking to have our governor welcoming that.”
Buck had her own reasons for showing up to Saturday’s protest.
“We hope that our levers of power in the county and the city help us to stop this,” she said. "There are a lot of good reasons for it not to happen, but perhaps the best is that we're in a severe drought, and we don't have the water for that facility. That facility was made for packages, not for people.”
And Koyle had hers.
“I'm 78. The people with me, there's one 92-year-old, there’s one 86-year-old,” she said, "We're all grandmothers. We all have great-grandkids. We've got to set an example for them, and we've got to leave them a better world.”
