President Donald Trump headlined a rally before a friendly crowd in deep-red Alabama on Friday night, but hours before he arrived at the Mitchell Center, the university’s on-campus arena, in Mobile, hundreds of angry residents and University of South Alabama students turned out to protest his visit, according to AL.com.

Maura Mandyck, an organizer with Indivisible Mobile, a local chapter of the national grassroots network Indivisible, said she was proud of the young people in the crowd for standing up against the president.

“Those who will gather in the Mitchell Center tonight, the con men, the crooks, the enablers, and the blind followers, they know in their racist old bones that their time is coming to an end,” said Mandyck. “It is our time now. Even more so, it is your time now.”

Demonstrators denounced Trump as a “felon” and a “war criminal” within earshot of his supporters, some of whom shouted back at the student protesters, AL.com reported. The crowd marched across campus chanting slogans including “no Trump, no KKK, no fascists in the USA,” before stopping a few yards from a line of Trump supporters, where the two sides exchanged angry shouts.

Madison Rolader, a junior and president of the campus chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, the student wing of the Democratic Socialists of America, said she and others demonstrated because they were “disgusted that Trump was welcomed to the school.” She also condemned University of South Alabama President Jo Bonner, a former Republican congressman from southwest Alabama, over the visit.

Rolader said the protest coalesced around the argument that Trump represents the “billionaire class” rather than ordinary voters.

“We want to show them that we, the people, are tired,” Rolader told AL.com. “We’re angry, and we’re not going to have this. We’re upset. We are begging people in Congress to … do something about the ruins of the checks and balance [system] in our government right now, and they’re not. So it’s our job as the people to use our voice before it’s too late, and use it all together.”

The demonstration unfolded as Trump’s business dealings continue to draw scrutiny. The president, a billionaire himself, has generated more than $1 billion a year from cryptocurrency ventures alone since siding with the crypto industry early in his second term. Democrats are already discussing a series of congressional investigations into the Trump family’s business interests next year should they win control of the House, and control of the chamber — along with the investigative powers that come with the majority — will be decided in November’s midterm elections.

The protests pressed on Friday despite critics’ claims that Trump selected Alabama because of the state’s crimson-red political alignment and its appeal as a safe bastion of support at a time of collapsing presidential approval.

“Trump took a silver platter that the American people gave him to run with this economy. And many people believe that he has run it into the ground instead, in a short two-year time period,” said former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson. “And why he’s in Alabama tonight is because he’s welcome in Alabama. There’s a ton of red states where he might face boos right now. So that’s why he’s not going there to those places.”