The woman who climbed the monument to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies is freed after pleading not guilty to U. S. charges.
The woman who was arrested on the Fourth of July after she climbed onto the base of the Statue of Liberty to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies was charged with trespassing and two other misdemeanors and then released Thursday by a magistrate judge.
Therese Patricia Okoumou, 44, of Staten Island, pleaded not guilty to the charges during a brief hearing in federal court in Manhattan. At the end of the proceeding, she raised her right fist, drawing applause from supporters in the courtroom.
Outside the courthouse, Ms. Okoumou cited the words of former first lady Michelle Obama: “‘When they go low, we go high,’ and I went as high as I could,” she told supporters. She called the decision to climb “spur of the moment.”
Ms. Okoumou said she emigrated from the Republic of Congo to the United States in 1994, and her lawyer said she is a naturalized citizen.
She began scaling the base of the statue shortly after 3 p.m. on one of the monument’s busiest days of the year. The Statue of Liberty typically draws more than 20,000 visitors for the Independence Day holiday, according to the National Park Service.
Ms. Okoumou’s standoff with the authorities was shown live on television. After she refused orders to come down, members of the New York Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit climbed up and escorted her down at around 6:30 p.m.
Because of security concerns, park officials evacuated about 4,500 people who were on Liberty Island at the time, said Jerry Willis, a spokesman for the National Park Service.
Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said Ms. Okoumou had “staged a dangerous stunt that alarmed the public and endangered her own life and the lives of the N.Y.P. D. officers who responded to the scene.”
“While we must and do respect the rights of the people to peaceable protest,” Mr. Berman said, “that right does not extend to breaking the law in ways that put others at risk.”
Earlier, the authorities detained seven other demonstrators, members of a group called Rise and Resist, who hung a banner that called for the abolition of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They were each given a summons and escorted off the island, according to Sgt. David Somma, a spokesman for the United States Park Police’s New York field office.
Ms. Okoumou, who is known as Patricia, had been an active participant in the group’s events, but members of the group did not know she was going to climb the statue, organizers of the Rise and Resist protest said.
Detective Brian Glacken, a member of the Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit, said at a news conference late Wednesday that Ms. Okoumou initially was “a little combative” with the officers trying to rescue her.
“Then we kind of got her to calm down,” he said. “We told her, ‘We’re just looking to get you down safely.’” She then became cooperative, he said.
In addressing her supporters after her court appearance, Ms. Okoumou called the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy “draconian,” and said, “No child belongs in a cage.”
