WHAT: The Pilgrims: Our First Undocumented Immigrants demonstration
WHEN: Sunday 17 August 2025 1:00pm – 3:00pm
WHERE: Mayflower Steps, The Barbican, Plymouth, PL1 2LR
Protesting immigration raids, detainment camps, and deportation in the USA
Plymouth, England – On Sunday, 17 August 2025, Indivisible Southwest and Americans for Action Bristol will join together to host a demonstration at the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth.
The Mayflower Steps in Plymouth are near where the Pilgrims are believed to have departed for North America in September 1620, where they landed as undocumented immigrants on Wampanoag land.
Indivisible Southwest and Americans for Action have chosen this location to stage a demonstration to protest the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and their unlawful raids taking place throughout the US. Masked ICE law enforcement officers are abducting immigrants off streets and from workplaces, courthouses, and fields. They are using violence and racism to profile targets, some of whom are citizens, and detaining them in inhumane camps or exiling them without due process.
The Statue of Liberty has a plaque that reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” This message forms one of the founding cornerstones of American society.
To turn one’s back on the immigrants fleeing persecution, violence, or discrimination in their home countries is to deny the essential purpose of the founding of the US and its history as a nation of immigrants. The United States is a melting pot, and that diversity woven through the fabric of the country is what makes it great.
British allies, Americans, and other immigrants in the UK plan to attend this action in a show of solidarity with the immigrants facing persecution in the US. Sarah McLellan, one of the organisers, said:
“Even as an immigrant here in England, I still cannot fathom the fear that immigrants in the US are facing on a daily basis, afraid to go to work in case ICE shows up, afraid to be thrown in literal cages in the concentration camp in Florida, afraid to be separated from the life I’ve built and sent to a third country I’ve never been to. We are gathering in Plymouth to raise awareness and shine a light on this inhumane treatment of our fellow human beings.”
