Hundreds of students from several high schools in East L.A. staged a walkout and marched to the steps of City Hall in protest of the recent ICE arrests on Tuesday.
Waving flags and holding homemade signs, students as young as 14 left their classes and walked for over an hour to downtown L.A. The student protesters came from schools, including Oscar De La Hoya, Esteban E. Torres, Bravo Medical, Roosevelt, and Garfield High School, among others.
Delilah Ibarra, a freshman at Hilda Solis Learning Academy, expressed her feelings about seeing students walk out of school. She felt compelled to join them.
“Some of my friends, their parents already got deported, and sadly, they don’t have all of their families with them,” Ibarra said.
Alex Mendoza, a sophomore at Torres High School, also knows people whose families have been separated. He joined the walkout to show his support.
“I just think it’s cool how we’re all uniting together to be able to go out and show what we could do,” Mendoza said.
President Trump campaigned with promises of mass deportations and other immigration crackdowns. In the past few days, we have witnessed these promises being fulfilled, with an increased number of arrests of undocumented immigrants and hundreds of individuals being deported daily across the nation.
Marilyn Perez, a senior at Alliance Ted K. High School, expressed her disagreement with these policies and believes it is important to raise her voice for her community.
“You know, we want to support them, instead of ICE taking them just like that. They’re all hard-working people,” she said.
Tuesday marked the third consecutive day of anti-deportation demonstrations in Los Angeles.