Marchers for immigrant rights rallied in Birmingham Saturday. Four or five people, one carrying a bullhorn, led a procession carrying a banner that said “All are welcome,” as the long line of people chanted slogans in English and Spanish, at Railroad Park on Saturday.

“(The last month) has been an ongoing act of terrorism across the state,” Allison Hamilton, executive director of Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, said to the crowd before the march.

“We have seen so many people being deported, being detained or just being harassed. We see people with ICE at their doors at 3 in the morning, banging on their doors while their kids are sleeping, terrifying them.”

Two months after President Trump took office with the promise of mass deportations, Alabama has not yet seen mass arrests of undocumented immigrants, but advocates say ICE arrests have increased. State lawmakers have filed a flurry of legislation in recent weeks targeting immigrants.

Members of the crowd carried handmade signs like “My Mom fought for my future, now I will fight for her,” “Immigrant lives matter” and “Do you call yourself a Christian?”

After several speakers addressed the crowd, the group lined up behind a banner to march down the side of the park.

At the farthest end of the route, marchers paused traffic at an intersection to cross the street, eliciting enthusiastic honks from a few drivers and cheers in response from the crowd. A worker wearing a beanie drove by on a municipal street sweeper and pumped his arm.

Brian, 15, attended with his parents who immigrated from Mexico. While he and his brother are citizens, he said, his father, a construction worker, and his mother, a housekeeper are not. He said that hurts and feels unfair.

“We don’t do nothing bad. We’re good people,” he said. “Start talking about other people that are doing bad,” he said referencing criminals and drug cartel members. “Talk about them, not us. Leave us alone.”

Brian said he did not know what he would do if his parents were deported. His father, Juan, 49, said in Spanish that he is worried.

“The system is broken,” he said. He and his wife have been here for 27 years and would like to become documented. “We’ve paid our taxes, we’re dedicated to our work and we’re good neighbors,” he said.

Anna Sato, 28, teaches English as a second language, and her husband is an immigrant. Her Christianity was a motivator for attending the rally.

“The law has made it really difficult for people to even do it the ‘right way.’ And so it’s just about understanding that people are people, and we have to get to know their stories and who they are and why someone came to the country.”

In recent weeks, state lawmakers have filed legislation to criminalize transporting undocumented immigrants, a bill that was amended to exclude language about harboring immigrants after criticism that it was worded similarly to a fugitive slave law.

Lawmakers are considering bills to create an international wire transfer fee that would potentially fund law enforcement or English as a second language costs. Other bills proposed would create a 48-hour detention period after an arrest to check immigration status and require fingerprints and DNA samples be collected from undocumented people arrested for any reason.

Gene Lankford, 63, a retired pastor from Helena, said he joined the march because he believes immigrants make a positive contribution to the economy and it is wrong to target them.

“I believe no human being is illegal, and our country has a contradiction in using immigrant labor to fill a need but not wanting to have the immigrants be here.”

Lankford said the Bible teaches to love strangers

“The stranger in the Bible means the foreigner,” he said.

Leonor Vásquez González, 56, a Spanish professor at the University of Montevallo, also teaches English to non-speakers.

She sees that sometimes her students need help but they feel afraid to speak up.

“I’m here to support them and to show them that not everyone is against their families being together.”