The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which represents 19,000 drivers in New York City, called for a one hour strike on Saturday night in solidarity with protesters opposing President Trump's latest executive order, which suspended immigration from some majority-Muslim countries.

Unions and labor groups including the NYTWA and Make the Road New York, which advocates for low-wage and immigrant workers, helped organize an emergency protest at New York's JFK Airport Terminal 4, where two people who had received visas prior to the executive order were being detained.



"The president is putting professional drivers in more danger than they have been in any time since 9/11, when hate crimes against immigrants skyrocketed," the group said in a statement. "As an organization whose membership is largely Muslim, a workforce that's almost universally immigrant, and a working-class movement that is rooted in the defense of the oppressed, we say no to this inhumane and unconstitutional ban."



The executive order, signed Friday, halted the US refugee program for 120 days, indefinitely suspended the acceptance of refugees from Syria, and blocked citizens of majority-Muslim countries — Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen — from entering the country for 90 days.

The rule also affects green card holders, meaning permanent US residents originally from those nations may be barred from re-entering the US or traveling abroad.

"We know all too well that when government programs sanction outright Islamophobia, and the rhetoric of hate is spewed from the bully pulpit, hate crimes increase and drivers suffer gravely," said the NYTWA. "Our Sikh and other non-Muslim brown and black members also suffer from anti-Muslim violence."