![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Nancy-Culwell.jpeg\")
Nancy Culwell, left, and her sister Karen joined the No Kings protest at Houston City Hall on Saturday. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\nMontrose resident Nancy Culwell carried a printed yellow-and-black sign around Houston City Hall on Saturday declaring a message that the thousands who surrounded her appeared to support: \u201cICE Out! We Will Defend Our Neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many Houstonians have been literally screaming for almost a year that they don\u2019t want immigration enforcement removing people from the community, and now there\u2019s another layer to their message: end the government shutdown that\u2019s causing four-hour delays in the TSA security line at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Workers haven\u2019t been paid and aren\u2019t showing up to do their jobs, a situation President Donald Trump could end if he\u2019d stop playing politics, Culwell said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re standing up for our democracy,\u201d she said. \u201cNo wars. No ICE. No shutdown. We\u2019re tired of having our tax dollars go to criminal acts. He\u2019s a felon and he needs to be booted out of office with all his cronies. I think protesting builds community and if we can get to a certain percentage of people who are saying they don\u2019t want this kind of leadership, that could be the way we turn things blue.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Congress has been at a standoff since mid-February over Department of Homeland Security funding, which covers TSA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Senate voted earlier this week to pass a funding bill that excludes ICE. A House vote is pending, but some Republicans have said they\u2019re not willing to compromise on defunding ICE without getting something in return. Congress is in recess through April 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nancy Culwell, left, and her sister Karen joined the No Kings protest at Houston City Hall on Saturday. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\n
Elected officials on both sides of the aisle have blamed each other for the shutdown, which escalated earlier this week when Trump deployed ICE agents to 14 American airports, including Houston\u2019s IAH and Hobby, on March 23. The initiative was billed as a goodwill gesture to assist TSA and move the lines faster, but wait times at IAH spiked when the federal officers showed up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump signed an executive order<\/a> on Friday to pay TSA employees and acknowledged that America\u2019s air travel system has reached its breaking point. Some employees could see checks as early as Monday, the President said. Protesters at Saturday\u2019s event, however, said they don\u2019t put a lot of stock in Trump\u2019s promises. <\/p>\n Travelers told<\/a> the Houston Press that the \u201cswarm\u201d of ICE agents appeared to be at the airport to intimidate people rather than actually help. By Friday, reports circulated that the federal officers were checking IDs, further spreading fear among immigrants, whether they\u2019re documented or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee, who represents Texas District 18, said Friday that Democrats got Senate Republicans on board to support funding TSA immediately and \u201cleave the question of ICE funding for another day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnd now House Republicans are standing in the way, refusing to call a vote on a deal already approved by Senate Republicans, and letting TSA workers continue to go without pay for no good reason,\u201d Menefee said in a statement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Social media exploded over the weekend with photos of Congressional Republicans sailing past TSA lines with their security guards to go on vacation during the recess.\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Al Green, Menefee\u2019s opponent in a May 28 runoff for the Democratic nomination in District 18, attended Saturday\u2019s protest and told the Press he\u2019s outraged by what\u2019s going on in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \u201cThe President is putting politics above people,\u201d Green said. \u201cThe real reason the shutdown continues is President Trump is requiring the passage of bills unrelated to the shutdown. He wants to kill the filibuster, and if he can accomplish this, he\u2019ll do some other dastardly things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus, who wasn\u2019t at the No Kings event, said polling suggests that Americans blame both political parties for the long airport lines but Trump has taken the brunt of it because \u201che\u2019s the one rejecting overtures from the Republicans and Democrats when it comes to solving the shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been efforts to try to separate ICE from TSA and it\u2019s been rejected,\u201d he said. \u201cAs that narrative hardens, I think you\u2019ll see people blame the President more.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s certainly what was happening at Saturday\u2019s No Kings<\/a> protest. Houston\u2019s gathering, which an HPD officer estimated drew more than 7,000 people over the course of the four-hour event, was one of about 3,300 peaceful protests across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n No Kings protesters weren\u2019t just talking about ICE and the TSA situation at the airport. Signs called for Trump\u2019s impeachment, an end to the war in Iran and accused the administration of lying, misusing taxpayer money and harming children.\u00a0Popular signs included, \u201cOMG GOP WTF,\u201d \u201cA Woman Could Fix This,\u201d \u201cNo Faux King Way,\u201d and \u201cHelp Fight Truth Decay.\u201d <\/p>\n Spring Branch resident John Nicks said he\u2019s \u201ctired of Trump destroying our country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to get rid of ICE,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to fully fund TSA. We need to expand Medicaid. It\u2019s only going to get worse. It\u2019s gotten so bad that people are thinking of leaving the country.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Friends Kim and Marie, who did not want to use their last names in this article, drove in from The Woodlands to catch Some Like It Hot at the Hobby Center and a basketball game downtown, but their first stop of the day was the protest at City Hall. The women said they wanted to speak up for those who live in fear of retaliation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re tired of everything,\u201d Kim said, pointing out a placard that read, \u201cMy outrage doesn\u2019t fit on this sign.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think I\u2019m setting an example for my children,\u201d she added. \u201cWe have to speak up. We can\u2019t just ignore it when things are wrong. A lot of people are upset, and this is a way we can make sure that\u2019s visible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Marie noted that her daughter, a college student, participated in a campus protest against the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the effort wasn\u2019t well-received. She said her daughter discouraged her from dressing up and carrying signs to a No Kings protest last year, telling Marie she might get arrested. \u201cI said let them arrest me,\u201d Marie said. \u201cI\u2019m here to peacefully protest. We need to be able to do this. We have to stand up for democracy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Local No Kings demonstrations were held in June<\/a> and October<\/a> 2025. Saturday\u2019s event was the first large organized protest in Houston since American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti were shot by federal agents in Minneapolis in January. Rottinghaus told the Press that the fight over ICE has become far removed from the reason it was initiated: violence against people who aren\u2019t savage criminals and whose immigration status isn\u2019t being questioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Democrats need to return to that messaging if they\u2019re going to be successful,\u201d Rottinghaus said. \u201cThey were winning on that, and the polling was very clear on that. Democrats were willing to fight that battle and shut down this fraction of the government as a result. It\u2019s easy to do in the abstract. It\u2019s harder to do when you\u2019ve got lines out the door at the airports.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unknown how long the shutdown will continue, the professor added.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, the ball is in President Trump\u2019s court,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s got to make a concession on this, and if he doesn\u2019t,\u00a0 it could last for a while. President Trump is pretty erratic, so trying to pin him down and getting him to make a deal may be harder than expected.\u201d<\/p>\n Dale Tucker said he hoped Saturday\u2019s protests across the country would send a message to Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a taxable amount on my IRS forms for social security that he said he wasn\u2019t going to have,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cHe started a war that he said he wasn\u2019t going to have. He said he was going to end the Ukraine War in 24 hours and then he took Putin\u2019s side. Trump is a living reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. ICE is the secret service that Hitler had. They did the same thing to the Jews. He\u2019s getting the world in a war, and he\u2019s going to lose. I\u2019m hoping he gets impeached this year.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Montrose resident Nancy Culwell carried a printed yellow-and-black sign around Houston City Hall on Saturday declaring a message…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":689220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[113716,13023,125843,327,69,49089,12730,4345,52355,158775,358,140578,3187],"class_list":["post-689219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-no-kings","tag-al-green","tag-christian-menefee","tag-congress","tag-donald-trump","tag-government-shutdown","tag-homepage","tag-houston","tag-houston-city-hall","tag-peaceful-protest","tag-texas","tag-tsa","tag-tx"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116310116283228328","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Al-Green.jpeg\")
Congressman Al Green, center, arrives at Houston City Hall for the No Kings protest on March 28. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/We-the-People.jpeg\")
Friends Kim and Marie traveled from The Woodlands for Saturday\u2019s No Kings protest. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Cowardly-Lion.jpeg\")
Costumes have become common at the No Kings protests at Houston City Hall. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\n