Activists and celebrities have joined together to participate in hunger strikes to protest illegal alien families being detained at the border, with the children often separated from parents or adult guardians. The fact that President Trump signed an Executive Order abandoning family separations doesn’t matter. They want to end zero tolerance policy altogether.

Focusing first on McAllen, Texas – home of the busiest station for detaining illegal migrants and the largest detention facility for children in the country – a 24-day hunger strike was organized by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Organization. The Executive Order signed by Trump isn’t enough.

The hunger strike will last 24 days to mark the estimated 2,400 children forcibly separated from their parents while crossing the border. Participants will each fast for 24 hours before passing off to someone else. Organizers asked that anyone participating donate money or food to border organizations like La Union del Pueblo Entero.

Hunger strike participants say they were heartened that worldwide outage prompted President Donald Trump on Wednesday to end his policy of forcibly separating families. But they said that’s not enough, because thousands of kids have already been stripped from their parents’ arms and detained separately.

Among those participating in the hunger strike:

• 10 members of Congress and one U.S. senator.
• Alec Baldwin
• Martin Sheen
• Alfre Woodard
• CCH Pounder
• Levar Burton
• Kerry Kennedy, who runs the RFK Human Rights center

Nearly 50 members of the Kennedy clan participated in a 24 hour fast, but not at the border. Kerry Kennedy encouraged those unable to go to the border to make the gesture and donate the amount of money that would have been used on food for that time period to an organization which appears to have been set up specifically to protest Trump’s policy.

“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,” said Kerry Kennedy, Ethel and Robert’s daughter and head of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group.

The hunger strike will last 24 hours and participants are asked to make a donation to the organization Break Bread Not Families in place of the food they would have eaten.

Joining in on the shorter hunger strike was the Kennedy family matriarch, 90-year-old Ethel Kennedy. Ethel is the widow of Robert Kennedy and mother of Kerry. Her grandson, Rep. Joe Kennedy III also participated.

In a statement, Ethel Kennedy said the executive order Trump signed last week halting the separations 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,” the statement said.

Her grandson, Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III, will also participate.

“For children being starved of contact with their parents, the irreparable harm inflicted by our government multiplies every single day kids remain separated from their moms and dads,” he said in a statement.

You can watch a short video to get the idea.

This is not a new tactic in the protest toolbox. Leftist unions frequently used hunger strikes to protest on behalf of migrant farm workers in the 1960s. The leftists are hoping to maintain the sense of outrage that began with the election of Donald Trump and continues to this day, with illegal immigration the latest subject to rally protests and angry crowds. Making ICE and Border Patrol agents the subject of their rage is the trend now.

It seems to me that all the rage may very well backfire, though, before we even get to the mid-term elections in November. Nothing fires up conservative voters like illegal immigration and the Supreme Court of the United States. Both issues have moved Democrats to the farthest point on the left. The left will not be satisfied until ICE is abolished, our borders are wide open, and a replacement for Justice Kennedy is postponed until sometime after the first of next year when they plan to be in the majority.

It was President Barack Obama who said rather smugly that “elections have consequences.” He was right, of course, but the Democrats just didn’t look a bit further on down the road at that time to envision a time when Republicans would be in charge. President Trump ran on stricter border patrol and reforming immigration policy. A man who prides himself on being a disruptor, he is now simply fulfilling his campaign promises.

Elections do have consequences. The inability of the left to get over the last presidential election results continues to polarize the country. Don’t be surprised, though, if Republicans turn out in just as high of numbers as those Democrats expected to vote in November.