Hundreds marched in southeast Baltimore Wednesday to protest what they say is the detention of at least 16 people in the region by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the last three weeks, after raids at grocery stores, convenience shops and a Home Depot.

The peaceful protest and march was led by CASA, a nonprofit that provides support services for immigrants and advocates on their behalf.

“ICE out of Maryland! ICE out of Baltimore!” they chanted to drumbeats, as passersby peered from windows and rowhouse steps, often filming with their cell phones, sometimes cheering with the crowd.

“We have seen a spike in the Baltimore region — and our surrounding area — of raids,” said Crisaly De Los Santos, CASA’s Baltimore and Central Maryland director, during a news conference Wednesday. “These raids are not isolated incidents. They are an assault on our immigrant families, on working-class neighborhoods and the dignity of Baltimore as a whole.”

The protestors marched from CASA’s Baltimore Welcome Center on Pulaski Highway to two locations that organizers say were the site of ICE activity: a Royal Farms on East Fayette Street and the Hazlo International Foods store on East Lombard Street.

Baltimore Police vehicles blocked traffic along the route to let marchers proceed through the streets. CASA officials estimated the crowd at about 400 people.

As the crowd passed on East Fayette Street near her home, María Flores was moved to tears. She said that seeing the demonstrators filled her with joy, during a challenging time for her community.

“We are very scared for those without papers,” she said in Spanish.

The raids come as President Donald Trump has made good on his campaign promise to speed deportations of undocumented migrants.

In March, Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was arrested by immigration officials and deported to El Salvador, despite having court protection against removal to his home country since 2019. He was held in prison there for months, despite court orders — including from the U.S. Supreme Court — for the Trump administration to bring him home.

His detention sparked a firestorm, heightened when Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D- Md.) went to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia. He was finally brought back last week to Tennessee, where he will be tried on federal charges of conspiracy to unlawfully transport undocumented people for profit in connection with a 2022 traffic stop there.

Protests against ICE detentions in Los Angeles prompted Trump to send in California National Guard troops and Marines, against the wishes of California officials who said the actions threatened to inflame the situation. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) sued Trump, who in turn threatened Newsom with arrest.

On Wednesday in Baltimore, CASA officials said that ICE officers struck a child during a June 8 confrontation with a Baltimore City resident near a grocery store with his wife, three children and 80-year-old mother, according to a CASA news release.

“With videos and witnesses sharing, we can see that his young son was assaulted in the process, leaving him with blood all over his face,” De Los Santos said at Wednesday’s news conference.

ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations Wednesday afternoon.

Perla Hernández, a community organizer with CASA, said she witnessed a man arrested by ICE agents inside a Baltimore County shopping center “as he was shopping for items for his daughter’s birthday,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter. “Violently, three ICE agents threw him down to the ground, ignoring his pleas and asks to see a warrant signed by a judge.”

The May 20 arrests at the Home Depot along Eastern Avenue on May 20 were also jarring, De Los Santos said. Five day laborers were “chased, tackled and forcibly abducted,” she said. Days later, men in ski masks came back to the same location and arrested four additional immigrants, she said.

“That day, five families were torn apart,” said Julia Fernandez, a CASA member.

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“A man providing for eight family members — including six children under the age of 10 — was abducted, leaving traumatized children behind, and his niece, recently recovering from surgery, without their father figure,” Fernandez said.

Several state and local lawmakers flanked CASA staffers and spoke out against the ICE arrests at the news conference, including Del. Robbyn Lewis (D- Baltimore City), who represents East Baltimore’s District 46. She cited policy changes lawmakers have approved for migrants, such as expanded access to the earned income tax credit and access to Medicaid for pregnant women, regardless of immigration status. But she said there is only so much legislators can do.

“Right now, as a state legislator — it’s hard to say this — but I actually have limited power to impact what’s done at the federal level,” Lewis said.

Lawmakers this year were unable to pass a law banning so-called 287(g) agreements, which essentially let local police act as immigration agents. Instead, they passed a bill educating immigrants and property owners on how to respond if ICE agents show up in “sensitive locations” like churches, courthouses or hospitals.

Lewis said the ICE detentions resonate powerfully with her as the descendant of African Americans who escaped slavery with the help of abolitionists.

“The tactics that are being used today to terrorize our neighborhood residents — Marylanders — have been used and perfected in this country, used against African Americans and those abolitionists who went out of their way, with their faith and their strong morality, to help us,” Lewis said.

Baltimore City Councilman Mark Parker, a pastor who was elected last year to represent the Southeast portion of the city, said he has been responding “for months now,” sometimes on a daily basis, to calls from residents affected by raids. He spoke of talking with family members, visiting their homes and traveling to the George H. Fallon Federal Building in Baltimore.

Shortly after Parker took office in December, he said that some officials discussed laying low to avoid the scrutiny of the Trump administration.

“But that kind of rhetoric acts like our neighbors aren’t being attacked every single day already,” Parker said.

City Councilwoman Odette Ramos, who represents District 14, including Johns Hopkins University and Lake Montebello, said the raids and the harm they are causing immigrant communities is the “fault of this administration — the Trump administration.”

“Imagine — all of you here — that this is going to happen to your family,” Ramos said. “Planning for separation, planning to be gone and sent to a life that you escaped, but also that you don’t know, after investing so much into our nation and believing in the promise of the United States.”

Demonstrators with megaphones led the crowd in chants, including: “Sí se puede,” and “Say it loud, say it clear: Immigrants are welcome here!”

Watching the marchers, resident Lizette Rodriguez pumped her fist. She isn’t an immigrant, she said, but she was moved by the demonstration.

“It’s inspiring,” she said. “They’re fighting for their rights.”

Southeast Baltimore resident Halal Henderson watched as the crowd arrived at the Royal Farms, where they knelt for a few moments, fists raised skyward.

“This is the land of the free,” Henderson said. “Why can’t they come over here and be free?”

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