Chrissy Teigen Pays Tribute To Mother's Immigrant Roots At Immigration Rally

Chrissy Teigen made it a point to highlight the contributions of immigrants at the Families Belong Together rally in Los Angeles this past weekend.

The model spoke out at the protest on Saturday, taking a stand against the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy. Teigen told the crowd about her immigrant roots as she held her newborn son, Miles, at his “first rally.”

“I’m incredibly proud to be a daughter of an immigrant,” she said. “My mother grew up in a very small village in Thailand and she never lets me forget it.”

Teigen went on to highlight the contributions of immigrants while taking jabs at President Donald Trump.

“We love how the American story is filled with people who come from all over the world to have a better life here. America at its best is big, beautiful and diverse, like our great city of Los Angeles. It’s not small, it’s not petty and not exclusive like Mar-a-Lago,” she said before doing a pretty splendid Trump impression.

She called out those who have “demonized immigrants like they’re stealing something from people born here.” Teigen said that immigrants add to the American fabric and, citing several of the Trump administration’s policies, explained how not to make America great again.

“Making America greater most definitely doesn’t mean turning asylum-seekers away or kidnapping their kids to turn them away from coming here. I cannot even comprehend the cruelty in the hearts of the people who enacted this policy, but I do know that they didn’t expect us to come together in such an incredible way to resist this.”

Trump’s zero tolerance policy has resulted in more than 2,300 children being separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border between May 5 and June 9. And while Trump has perpetuated the idea that immigrants take jobs away from U.S. workers throughout his campaign and his presidency, studies show that immigration is actually tied to positive economic growth.

But as author Celeste Ng pointed out in a series of tweets back in May, the value of immigrants doesn’t lie in the wealth they bring, the educational degrees they earn or how quickly they can “assimilate” into U.S. culture. “The strength of the US comes from our diversity and from our inclusion. Every group of immigrants has added to who we are,” Ng wrote.

“We are here and we are not going away,” Teigen said of the protesters at Saturday’s rally. “We are here because we believe America can and should do better.”

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.