AUSTIN (KXAN) — At least 57 people were arrested by law enforcement Wednesday amid a protest showing support for Gaza at the University of Texas at Austin, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.
The protest was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Committee of Austin calling for students to walk out of class and march to “occupy” the South Lawn until past 7 p.m., according to a social media post. It said it planned to demand the administration divest or withdraw its investments from Israel.
KXAN reporters and photojournalists witnessed several people being detained during the protest Wednesday, including a local Fox 7 photojournalist, who was released Thursday shortly before noon.
Several people were released from the jail early Thursday morning and spoke with KXAN reporters on the scene. One of them, Serene, said she doesn’t “feel like the university has our side.”
Serene said she was taken into custody at 5 p.m. Wednesday and released at 5 a.m. Thursday. A group of her friends were among several people waiting outside the jail overnight for people to be released.
“I was behind the line, there was a chain link in front of me. They would basically come at us in bursts and they would just start charging out of nowhere,” Serene explained. “And so I tried to back up, but my arm got grabbed and I got taken down, unfortunately.”
Serene said she’s not facing any charges at this time.
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Serene (left) with friends who waited outside the Travis County Jail overnight into the early hours of Thursday for her to be released after she was arrested during pro-Palestine protests at UT Wednesday. (KXAN Photo) -
People gathered and waited outside the Travis County Jail overnight into the early hours of Thursday to receive people who were arrested during pro-Palestine protests at UT Wednesday as they began being released Thursday morning. (KXAN Photo/Lauren Ryan)
Robert Heil, a longtime Austinite, was outside of the jail waiting for his kid and other arrested during the protests to be released. He said his child is a freshman at UT and was taken into custody around 3 p.m. Wednesday and was released around 8 a.m. Thursday.
“I’ve lived in Austin for a long time and I’ve seen a lot of protests in Austin over those years, and I’ve never seen as heavy-handed of a response from the state police. They came into a peaceful situation very heavily armed,” Heil said. “I was stunned. Seeing the state police marching in the full riot gear to end what would’ve been a peaceful protest… I was really surprised by that.”
Another UT freshman, Lina Nguyen, said she was part of a group of people linking arms in front of a blockade of state troopers. She said she was pulled out of a crowd by two officers after they told the group to back up. Nguyen said she never heard law enforcement tell people to disperse.
“Just telling us to back up, back up, and we were like we are backing up, we are backing up. But there were people behind us and our arms are locked, we cannot move. It’s a dangerous situation, stampedes happen all the time and those really do hurt people,” Nguyen explained.
She said she’s not facing charges at this time.
There were still a few dozen people waiting outside the jail for others to be released as of 12:30 p.m. Thursday. Organizers who had brought food and were keeping count outside the jail said by their count, 59 people had been released by midday and they were still waiting for 16 more.
The Travis County Attorney’s Office said it reviewed 46 cases related to the protest Wednesday and determined some people needed to be released from jail because of “deficiencies in the probable cause affidavits.”