Ethel Kennedy, 90, is joining the hunger strike to protest the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy at the southern border, The Boston Globe reports.
The widow of Robert Kennedy said she is "very joyful" about joining the cause, according to daughter Kerry Kennedy.
"We want to find a way for people who can't go down to the border to actually do something themselves at home that is concrete and creates change, and this is what we're calling on them to do," Kerry Kennedy told the Globe.
The strike, partially organized by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Organization, began Saturday at noon near the federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, the busiest station for detaining migrants trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico.
The hunger strike is scheduled to last 24 days in honor of the estimated 2,400 children that have been separated from their parents. Participants will each fast for 24 hours before passing off to someone else. RFK Human Rights, founder by Ethel Kennedy, organized the hunger fast along with La Unión Del Pueblo Entero, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and Neta.
President Donald Trump last Wednesday reversed himself and signed an executive order halting his administration's policy of separating children from parents when they are detained illegally crossing the U.S. border, but it does not change anything yet for the children taken from their families since the policy was put into place in late April.
Ethel Kennedy in a statement said Trump's policy was "not a time to declare victory and go home. Generations of Americans did not toil and sacrifice to build a country where children and their parents are placed in cages to advance a cynical political agenda."
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