In Los Angeles between 500,000 and a million people filled the city’s streets Saturday to protest the new anti-immigrant bill, HR 4437. The Los Angeles Times reported it was possibly the largest gathering in the city’s history. One local Spanish-language tv station in Los Angeles put the crowd total at over two million people. “We are in favor of an immigration reform, but not in criminalizing our children,” said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the city’s first Latino mayor. The House of Representatives has already approved legislation that would criminalize 11 million undocumented immigrants and make it a crime for priests, nuns, health care workers and other social workers to offer them help. Other large immigrant-led protests occurred throughout the country. 50,000 people took to the streets in Denver. 20,000 rallied in Phoenix in what may have been the city’s largest protest ever. In Atlanta, 70,000 immigrant workers took part in a work stoppage on Friday. Other protests occurred in New York, Charlotte, Dallas and Sacramento. In Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to begin debating the Senate version of the immigration bill today.