The protest of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown was part of a campaign by the national Jewish youth protest movement Never Again, whose members have committed acts of civil disobedience across the country, most recently on Sunday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, where 36 were arrested.

CENTRAL FALLS — More than 200 people gathered in protest around the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility on Tuesday afternoon and remained for about three hours until 18 were arrested for civil disobedience.

The protest of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown was part of a campaign by the national Jewish youth protest movement Never Again, whose members have committed acts of civil disobedience across the country, most recently on Sunday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, where 36 were arrested.

"It is important that folks in the Jewish community are here in solidarity," said Arely Diaz, lead organizer for Providence-based Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance. "The Alt-Right has been targeting them, too."

"We are here as Jews in support of front-line communities outside of this ICE detention center," said Tal Frieden, an organizer with Never Again. "Because when we say never again, we mean it!

"This crisis is not just about ending camps," Frieden continued, during the action where detention facilities were frequently described as "concentration camps."

"It is about ending the deportation machine."

Wyatt has been at the epicenter of protests and court battles since it was revealed in March that Warden Daniel Martin signed a contract rider to an agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service to set aside 225 beds for ICE detainees picked up in the Trump administration's "Southern Border Zero Tolerance Initiative."

As of three weeks ago, there were 120 ICE detainees at Wyatt.

Tuesday's protest came to a head at around 9 p.m. when Central Falls, Cumberland and state police officers moved in to arrest 19 people blocking a Plymouth County Sheriff's Department vehicle as it was backing out of the facility's sally port.

Among the 18 arrested was J. Aaron Regunberg, former state representative, candidate for lieutenant governor and current aide to Mayor Jorge O. Elorza.

"Never Again isn’t just about remembering how the Holocaust ended," Regunberg, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, said in a prepared statement. "It’s also about how it started, with a gradual process of legal exclusion and state-sponsored dehumanization that led eventually to the deaths of my grandpa’s family and so many millions of others. It’s about understanding the path from beginning to end, and then throwing ourselves in the way of that path however we possibly can."

Of the 19, 18 were arrested, with only Sy Gitin remaining and awaiting arrest in a wheelchair as protesters chanted Jewish hymns close by.

"It's powerful [to be here]," Gitin said. "I have family members who died in the Holocaust, so this is a personal issue in that way.

"It's also very personal since I am a trans person and there are trans people dying at the border," Gitin continued. "But also, there are people dying at the border and I am a person. I feel that as a person and as a Jewish person it is my duty and my responsibility to act out when there is injustice happening. This is something that I am able to do, so I am doing it."

At least a few of the protesters, including Regunberg, had gained release by 11 p.m. The fate of others was not clear; Central Falls police did not respond to requests for information.

On April 5, the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation — which governs the jail — ordered the ICE agreement suspended and that ICE detainees be sent to other facilities. That prompted a lawsuit by bondholders, whose trustee is Kansas City, Missouri-based UMB Bank, seeking for an injunction on the suspension in federal court against the city, corporation, and City Council and $130 million in damages.

Rhode Island's U.S. District chief judge, William E. Smith, ordered that decision reversed on April 26 and sent the parties into mediation and appointed a special master, Deming E. Sherman, to mediate disputes between parties governing Wyatt and make recommendations to the court on its operations.

Wyatt officials declined to comment.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

-- kandrade@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7646

On Twitter: @Kevprojo