(AP) — Hundreds of advocates for immigrants and civil rights rallied Saturday outside Alabama’s state Capitol and called for lawmakers to repeal a controversial law, which foes called a throwback to the state’s segregationist past.

Protesters waved signs saying “One Family One Alabama” on the statehouse grounds before taking to the streets for a march to the Governor’s Mansion.

Conducted in English and Spanish, the rally drew high-profile civil rights figures including NAACP president Benjamin Todd Jealous as well as activists from immigrant rights groups and labor unions.

“This has been the site for the fight against racism and this is another chapter in that continuum,” said Julia Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza.

The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the Alabama immigration law and GOP Gov. Robert Bentley signed it this year with the goal of scaring off illegal immigrants, a move supporters said would open up jobs for legal residents in a state suffering from nearly 10 percent unemployment at the time.

Sections of the law took effect in late September amid court challenges, but other parts were blocked by federal courts in response to lawsuits by the Obama administration, immigrant rights groups, religious organizations and others.

Now foes of the Alabama law say it has made Montgomery a focal point in the struggle to end racial profiling of immigrants just as the city became a battlefield for civil rights in the 1960s.

“It has destroyed lives and ripped apart families,” said Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “It has sent Alabama back at least 20 years.”

Laura Ruiz, a housekeeper who says she moved to the U.S. illegally from Mexico a decade ago, joined the rally while pushing her sleeping 2-year-old son, Ezequiel, in a stroller.

Ruiz said she’s made a life in Alabama and doesn’t want to leave.

“We’re scared,” she said. “I’m very scared.”

Jealous of the NAACP used his remarks to take aim at Bentley, saying, “We don’t have time to wait for you to regret what you did as governor.”

Faced with increasing criticism from business and agricultural leaders, Bentley and Republican legislative leaders this month said they are working on changes to clarify and simplify the law, but they have rejected calls for major changes or the repeal of the law during the upcoming session.

Bentley has said he welcomed opponents of the law to express their views, but he insists the immigration law will not be repealed.