By SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A coalition of civil rights, religious and union activists opposed to President Donald Trump's immigration policies are gearing up for a protest in Nevada outside a school safety conference where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the keynote speaker.

Several of the protesters gathering for Monday's rally outside a hotel-casino in Reno said they would engage in civil disobedience to bring attention to the separation of children from their families at the U.S. border.

At least one, Bob Fulkerson, told The Associated Press he expects to be arrested.

Nearly two dozen Nevada groups in a progressive alliance tried unsuccessfully last week to persuade the national school law enforcement group hosting the conference to withdraw its invitation to Sessions.

Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, said Sessions has important information to share with school resource officers as the nation's top law enforcement officer. He said Friday that Sessions' message is especially important "in the wake of recent, tragic shootings at several of the nation's schools."

Fulkerson is the head of the political action arm of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada. He said he's willing to go to jail protesting because he couldn't imagine his own 2-year-old grandson being subjected to such "unbearable trauma." He said the Trump administration's policy is "fundamentally, undeniably evil."

Trump's immigration policy was prominent at the Nevada Democratic Party's state convention in Reno on Saturday.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in the keynote address that Trump has called immigrants "animals," locked small children in cages and "shrugged off the problem" of reuniting thousands of children who have been taken away from their parents.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., the first Latina elected to the Senate in 2016, said the Trump administration's executive order issued last week doesn't solve anything.

"The executive order that this administration signed still wants to put children and their families behind bars and treat them like criminals," she said Friday during a news conference with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. "That is the zero-tolerance policy that this administration under Jeff Sessions implemented and they have not changed that policy."

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