Across the nation, high school students are walking out of class in protest of the current ICE raids.
Students say they are using their voice to raise awareness about deportation and what they describe as violence caused by ICE.
Many local high schools participated in walkouts, including Turlock High School, Fred C. Beyer High School, James C. Enochs High School, Downey High School, Johansen High School and Gregori High School.
At Gregori High School, the lunch bell cued students to begin the walk out with their peers.
The goal of the protest was to raise awareness within the community about what organizers called the “unfair cruelty ICE agents are using against families,” according to an Instagram post made by no.kingsusa, a student-run political movement.
Students who attended the protest shared concerns about their own immigrant families and communities.
Damian Gleason (Sophomore, Gregori High School) led the protest, where about 300 students walked from the school to Dale Road. This was his second anti-ICE protest he’s held; the first protest took place during his Freshman year at Stagg High School.
Gleason says he initially worried school administrators would intervene with the protest, until the school sent out an email that informed the students that the school couldn’t do anything about the protest.
“So I was like, ‘ok, we’re gonna do this. This is what we’re doing tomorrow.’ Because that’s basically our green light. They are not going to be able to stop us,” Gleason said.
During the walk, he heard commotion behind him and was told that somebody had thrown a water bottle out of a moving car at a protester.
“I heard commotion, I heard somebody yell, and I went over there and I just saw this girl crying. She’s like, covering her eye,” he said.
After a check on the student’s safety, the walkout continued.
Gleason said the purpose of the protest was to educate others and make their voices heard.
“I was able to spread our message across cities, across anywhere, anyone who heard it. That’s all we wanted, to be heard,” he said.
He also talked about how immigrants come here for a better life and work hard, his grandparents are immigrants who legally live in the United States, but there’s concern that ICE is detaining U.S citizens.
“I always imagine just how I would feel if my grandparents would be the one getting taken away because right now, it’s such a scary time,” he said. “Just because you have citizenship doesn’t mean you are safe and it’s just so scary because you can be taken at any time.”
He said he believes ICE officers are treating immigrants harshly.
“I don’t feel that we need to have federal agents going out there and collecting them, brutally or harming them or just we’ve seen so many different cases of many immigrants going missing,” he said.
Gleason also addressed criticism that students’ voices do not matter because they are minors.
“That is such a wrong claim. Like, I don’t think that’s right. Just because we are younger doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything,” he said.
Mia Alva (Junior, Gregori High School) helped organize Gregori’s protest alongside Gleason. She said seeing immigration related posts on social media has been heartbreaking.
Alva, who has immigrant grandparents, described the issue as personal.
“Currently in our country our president has been allowing ICE agents to deport and kill innocent people. That includes people who were born on American soil,” Alva said.
In reflection to the walkout, Alva shared how inspiring and brave her peers were for walking out and fighting for change.
“No matter how insignificant you may think your voice is or your actions are, they really do matter a lot more,” she said. “I think the people need to be reminded that we are the ones that are supposed to be in power. Not the politicians, not the government.”
She thinks ICE are ignorant and cruel, and that innocent people have been affected by them.
“If we just sit back and allow it to happen, things will get worse for us, because then we’re giving into whatever agenda that they want us to have,” she said.
Macayle Manipol (Senior, Gregori High School) shared her story on how it feels living in America as an immigrant during these times.
Manipol and her family immigrated to the United States in 2012, so the topic of immigration and ICE is relevant to her and her family members.
“It doesn’t feel like the American dream that my family and I came here for, and I get really emotional about this topic, honestly, because, that could always be one of my family members,” Manipol said.
She said many immigrants come to the United States seeking safety and opportunity. She believes the promise of justice and protected rights is not being upheld.
“This country promised freedom and promised that they would give justice for all and protect their rights,” she said. “But I believe that right now our rights are being trampled on, with a bunch of immigrants being detained without due process.”
Manipol said it is “disheartening” to see what she described as violent treatment by ICE officers.
“It’s just scary knowing that at any moment my family could be separated and questioned, even if it’s just for a few moments,” she said.
She later added that she and her family were not concerned until they saw citizens being detained and violently attacked in the media.
“I also believe that immigrants have a right to be here and not be counted as illegal people, because it’s dehumanizing language to even say that, because there’s nothing that separates an illegal immigrant from a legal immigrant than just a paper,” she said.
Manipol then talks about her experience at the protest, and how being with a community of people protesting against ICE and supporting immigrants felt very validating.
“It was just nice to know that these people are united in one movement, that we all believe in,” she said. “It was something that it just made me feel so accepted because I’ve always felt so ostracized being an immigrant here.”
Rachel Ortiz (Sophomore, Gregori High School) said she believes ICE’s actions are unjust and that she often feels helpless watching events unfold.
“It’s just so insane to me how some people can stand behind this and support such senseless and dehumanization and like violence,” Ortiz said. “I think this walkout was a perfect opportunity for me and my fellow classmates to just speak up and really be able to get the ground at momentum to speak up.”
She said stereotypes portraying immigrants as “lazy, dirty, illegal animals and aliens” are harmful and inaccurate.
Sharing that she comes from a family of immigrants who worked hard to build a life in the United States.
“Immigrants take along a lot more laborious and heavy tasks, and they shape, especially here in the Central Valley, a lot of the field and agricultural jobs, they are taken up by immigrants,” she said.
Ortiz shared that she was very happy to see many people at her school come together to protest and walk out, and that it brought everyone closer together. Believing it was a very brave thing to do, but it was also scary.
“I would say that I think you need to remember who you are doing this for, people who can’t protest, the people who don’t, who can’t speak up,” she said.
She explained that the protest was important to show people that they have a supportive community behind them, and that she hopes this gives people the courage to speak out.
“I think it just opened, maybe some people’s eyes to how much this community actually cares for each other,” she said. “This really spread awareness to people who maybe thought that it wasn’t affecting that many people.”
