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Trump’s Immigration Ban Sparks Second Day of Protests at LAX Airport

Joss Whedon, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Ellen Page and stars of 'How to Get Away With Murder' and 'Grey's Anatomy' lent their voices Sunday afternoon.

By Kevin Cassidy, Jackie Strause

Trump's Immigration Ban Sparks Second Day of Protests at LAX Airport
Getty Images

Crowds gathered for the second day in a row at LAX to protest President Donald Trump’s immigration and travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Joss Whedon, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, California Congressman Ted Lieu and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and actress Ellen Page were part of a group of hundreds who descended on the airport to decry the detention of travelers from countries on the list, which includes Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen. 

Throngs of protestors chanted “No bans, no walls, you build it up, we’ll tear it down” gathered outside the airport’s Tom Bradley International Terminal. 

Tim Robbins, Emily Ratajkowski, Alfred Enoch and Jack Falahee — of ABC’s How to Get Away With Murder — and Grey’s Anatomy‘s Kelly McCreary were some of the celebrities who took to Twitter to document the scene, which also hosted Patricia Arquette, Chloe Grace Moretz and many other protesting celebrities late Saturday night.

Matt McGorry, also of HTGAWM and Orange Is the New Black fame, was spotted handing out granola bars to fellow demonstrators.

Trump signed an executive order Friday that led to reports of travelers being detained or barred from entering the U.S. News of the ban moved swiftly on social media, leading to quickly organized protests at airports around the country, including JFK in New York, Dulles in Washington, D.C. and Logan Airport in Boston.

As the protests continued Sunday afternoon, Trump was hosting his first White House movie screening in the family theater with a showing of Finding Dory, Pixar and Disney’s animated Finding Nemo sequel that sees Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) searching for her family after being separated.

Mark Ruffalo and Michael Moore, the latter of whom shared information about protests on both coasts, helped to spread the word about a Sunday protest in NYC’s Battery Park, as cities across the country saw demonstrators again flooding airports on Sunday.

The protests were peaceful, however due to the turnout, a segment of the LAX loop roadway was closed, causing traffic delays for both arrivals and departures. ESPN host Sage Steele took to Instagram to decry the traffic closure, which caused missed flights.

“So THIS is why thousands of us dragged luggage nearly 2 miles to get to LAX, but still missed our flights,” she wrote. “I love witnessing people exercise their right to protest!,” she said. “But it saddened me to see the joy on their faces knowing that they were successful in disrupting so many people’s travel plans.”

She then added, “Yes, immigrants were affected by this as well. Brilliant.”

Twitter users were quick to call Steele out for complaining, shooting her name to the top of Twitter’s trending list Monday morning.

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Trump continued to defend the ban on Monday and blamed the chaos seen at airports over the weekend on a combination of the Delta computer outage, protesters and “the tears” of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who called Trump’s ban “un-American” in an emotional speech on Saturday. The airline outage took place over five hours on Sunday night, well after the detainment of travelers when Trump’s ban went into effect Friday night, kicking off two days of protests.

“Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage, protesters and the tears of Senator Schumer,” Trump tweeted early Monday. “Secretary Kelly said that all is going well with very few problems. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”

Trump added that there is “nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country,” adding that it was a big part of his campaign. He defended the speedy timing of putting the ban into effect as well, tweeting that if it had been announced with a week’s notice, “the ‘bad’ would rush into our country. A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!”

During a meeting with small business leaders at the White House later on Monday, Trump again called out Schumer, accusing him of crying “fake tears.”

“I’m going to ask him: who is his acting coach?” he said. “Because I know him very well. I don’t see him as a crier. If he is, he’s a different man. There’s about a 5 percent chance that it was real, but I think they were fake tears.”

Trump also said he will announce his Supreme Court nomination pick Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET.

See the scene of the protest at LAX, which began at 1 p.m. on Sunday, below:

Jan. 30, 6:20 a.m.: Updated with Monday tweets.

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