Hundreds of thousands of women flooded the US capital for the Women's March on Washington January 21, easily eclipsing the numbers President Donald Trump's inauguration drew the day before, Sputnik reported.
Washington's Metro released its ridership figures Saturday morning, and found that ridership was at 275,000 as of 11 a.m. — more than eight times a normal Saturday and busier than most weekdays, the public transit authority tweeted. As of 11 a.m. yesterday, 193,000 rides had been taken.
The National Park Service permit for the event originally estimated 200,000 would come to the event — by Saturday morning, organizers had upped their expected estimate to 500,000.
These numbers were achieved despite reports that some protesters have been stopped at US borders. Eight would-be protesters — six Canadians and two French nationals — were stopped at the border between Quebec and New York state on their way to join march, the Guardian reports. The group told border agents they were going to the march and were told to pull over. For two hours, their cars and mobile phones were searched, and each member of the group was fingerprinted and photographed. Then they were told to go home and not try to cross the border again during the weekend or they'd risk arrest. The two French citizens were told they had been denied entry to the US and would require visas for any future visits.
"And that was it, they didn't give a lot of justification," Sasha Dyck of Montreal, one of those turned around, said.