About 500 students from Santa Barbara and San Marcos high schools walked out of their second period classes on Tuesday to protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities.
The two protests, while distant from each other, were organized together by the high school’s Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán clubs. MEChA is a nationwide student-organization focused on empowering Chicanos.
“We wanted to amplify the protest and the impact as much as possible,” said Carlos Taft-Vasquez, a San Marcos senior and MEChA co-president.
The San Marcos students walked nearly a mile from campus, down Hollister Avenue to the Magnolia Shopping Center.
“We were actually planning on doing it a little later in the year, but we saw how much students really wanted to walk out because of what’s been going out in our community,” said Camila Tlahuitzo, San Marcos MEChA vice-president.
Meanwhile, at Santa Barbara High School, about 200 students walked to Santa Barbara City Hall from campus, according to Ed Zuchelli, Santa Barbara Unified School District communications manager.
The Eastside walkout also called for “protecting families, not fear, lowering ICE bonuses, funding immigrant communities, and keeping ICE out of the county and enforcing transparency and identification,” according to the school’s MEChA social media.
“We are coming together to stand in solidarity with those who are unheard, to demand policy changes, and to push local lawmakers to take action. Words are no longer enough.”
Santa Barbara High students, alongside those from Santa Barbara Junior High, previously protested over a week ago when they marched to De la Guerra Plaza behind City Hall.
Taft-Vasquez led the San Marcos crowd with a Bolivian flag wrapped around his shoulders, an homage to his father, who immigrated to America from Bolivia when he was 10 years old.
“There aren’t too many Bolivians here in Santa Barbara, and I find so much solidarity and unity with the rest of the Latino community,” he said.
Taft-Vasquez is also a student member on the Santa Barbara Unified School District board of trustees. He hopes to work with the board to ensure teachers and staff members are educated on what they should do if ICE agents show up on campus, he said.
“The biggest thing is making sure no teacher and staff would reveal any information about students,” he added.
Co-president and senior Johanna Gomez Lopez said she felt gratitude after seeing how many of her peers joined the protest.
“It’s really cool to see what we are here standing up for, all those kids who have been unjustly detained,” she said.
Some students waved Mexican, Guatemalan, Bolivian and El Salvador flags, while others carried signs saying “No Human Is Illegal” and “Abolish ICE” as they walked.
They also chanted “F*** ICE,” and “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
“This is really important because a lot of the students here are majority Hispanic, and a lot of our families are pretty scared, so it’s nice to see us all together,” Tlahuitzo said.
San Marcos MEChA leadership said that they hope passing motorists, whether in support or against them, see that the students support immigrant families.
Activists from Unión del Barrio, 805UndocuFund and ICE out of Goleta also joined the student’s march.
Walkout organizers urged students to have their parents call the administration office to excuse their absences.
But some students didn’t have their parents call in, saying that getting an absence is part of the protest.
“Originally, I was planning on calling in my absence, but then I realize it’s not really a protest if you excuse yourself — then it’s not really a protest anymore,” San Marcos senior Josue Quezada said.
After reaching the shopping center, students crowded together to hear from their peers.
Quezada shared a bilingual poem he wrote entitled “We Are Still Here.”
“They call us criminals, but we are so much more than that. We have a name, we carry stories, we are languages, we are dreamers,” he recited.
Senior Alondra Rubio shared through a megaphone that she’s lived with the fear of her mom getting deported ever since President Donald Trump was first elected into office in 2016.
After hearing a handful of speeches, the students walked back to campus, where some settled on the corner of Turnpike Road and Hollister Avenue while others walked towards the highway overpass as lunch time began.
“The future is in good hands. We are not scared to speak up, and we are not going to stay silent ,and we are ready to make the future great for ourselves,” Quezada said.