Actor Susan Sarandon was one of 575 people charged with unlawfully demonstrating during a heated Washington protest on Friday.

The women were protesting against the government's migration policy and cases of children being separated from their parents on the southern border.

Further protests were scheduled yesterday.

Sarandon, who won an Oscar for Dead Man Walking in 1996 and also starred in 1991's Thelma and Louise and The Witches of Eastwick in 1987, announced her arrest on Twitter.

Sarandon tweeted from the rally, where she and other women carried banners that said "We demand ... end all detention camps".

They also declared, "We care", in response to the jacket first lady Melania Trump wore last week.

The protest took place in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building. According to US Capitol Police, the individuals were processed on the scene and released.

The demonstrators were there to protest the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy that treats all illegal border crossings as criminal offences.

Trump signed an executive order last week ending family separations, but 2000 children remained separated.

A federal judge has ordered that families separated at the border be reunited within 30 days.

Sarandon tweeted, "Arrested. Stay strong. Keep fighting. #WomenDisobey,"

Sarandon has a long history of political activism. She participated in a march against gun violence in New York last month. The march was one of several around America to protest gun violence and urge lawmakers to pass gun restrictions.

She was also arrested in 1999 during a protest against a police shooting of an unarmed African American teenager in New York.