An immigration rights protester was arrested today at the congressional district office of Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Irvine), according to police.
The protest was part of the “National Day of Action in Support of Families Under Temporary Protected Status,” the Buena Park-based Korean Resource Center of Orange County previously announced.
Under TPS, refugees and immigrants from specified countries are allowed to legally extend their stays in the United States if returning home threatens their safety. The Trump White House has supported letting some TPS protections expire, which just led to a standoff between Chief of Staff John Kelly and Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly wanted Duke to expel Hondurans.
As that fight was heating up this afternoon in Washington, D.C., pro-TPS protesters were moving from outside Trump supporter Walters’ office at 3333 Michelson Drive to inside the building.
But they proceeded “to areas that are restricted to visitors,” says Kim Mohr, the Irvine Police Department spokeswoman. “The protesters were repeatedly asked to leave.”
Most did just that, but Dae Joong Yoon, 47, of Redondo Beach refused to leave, according to Mohr, who says he was placed under citizen’s arrest for trespassing just before 1 p.m. and was later taken into custody by police without incident.
Yoon, who is associated with the Korean Resource Center, has since been released.
Walters was not in her office at the time of the incident, Mohr says.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.