More than a million march in the U.S.
Kitchens that normally serve food were empty. Meat-processing plants came to a halt. Fields were barren of workers. Truckers avoided the nation's largest shipping port, and tens of thousands of students skipped school.
Despite divisions over whether the "Day Without Immigrants" sent the right message to lawmakers mulling reforms to federal law, the impact of the economic boycott was evident, though hardly uniform, at workplaces nationwide.
"We are the backbone of what America is, legal or illegal, it doesn't matter," said Melanie Lugo, who with her husband and their third-grade daughter joined an estimated 75,000 rallying in Denver. "We butter each other's bread. They need us as much as we need them."
In all, police departments contacted by The Associated Press in more than two dozen U.S. cities gave crowd estimates that totaled about 1.1 million marchers.
The mood was jubilant in Los Angeles, where hundreds of thousands of protesters wearing white and waving U.S. flags sang the national anthem in English as traditional Mexican dancers wove through the crowd. The mayor's office estimated 400,000 people attended back-to-back rallies in the city.
Protesters in Tijuana, Mexico, blocked vehicle traffic heading to San Diego at the world's busiest border crossing.
Tens of thousands rallied in New York, 15,000 in Houston and 30,000 more across Florida. Smaller rallies in cities from Pennsylvania and Connecticut to Arizona and South Dakota attracted hundreds, not thousands.
Many carried signs in Spanish that translated to "We are America" and "Today we march, tomorrow we vote." Others waved Mexican flags or wore hats and scarves from their native countries. Some chanted "USA" while others shouted slogans such as "Si se puede!" — Spanish for "Yes, it can be done!" Others were more irreverent, wearing T-shirts that read "I'm illegal. So what?"
Industries that rely on immigrant workers were clearly affected, though the impact was not uniform.
Tyson Foods Inc., the world's largest meat producer, shuttered about a dozen of its more than 100 plants and saw "higher-than-usual absenteeism" at others. Most of the closures were in states such as Iowa and Nebraska. Eight of 14 Perdue Farms chicken plants also closed for the day.
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