More than 50 students from the Houston Academy for International Studies walked out of school today protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the United States.
The protest, which students said they started planning last week, started just after noon. While chanting “ICE off our streets, ICE off our streets,” several students said they were there to call attention to the treatment of immigrants under the Trump Administration.
RELATED: Texas state leaders target school walkouts as students rally for Houston teen detained by ICE
Rabita Mazumder is a sophomore at the high school and said the treatment of immigrants in the United States is personal.
“My parents are both immigrants, and [people] are saying that, ‘Oh, immigrants provide nothing to this country,'” Mazumder said. “But my mother is a cancer researcher, and my father is a teacher, and you cannot tell me that they don’t provide any value to this country or that they deserve to be treated the way immigrants are getting treated today.”
This rally is the latest in the Houston area as students across Texas are hosting their own demonstrations protesting ICE. Last week, students at Elkins High School in Missouri City walked out of class to speak up against ICE. At Conroe High School, students joined nationwide protests against the federal agency, which has ramped up its enforcement of immigration laws under President Donald Trump.
Mazumder said she was nervous to join her classmates and walk out of school amid Governor Abbott’s calls for a crackdown on the student-led walkouts.
“When I first started hearing about it, I asked my parents multiple times, and they were both very supportive of me coming out here today,” Mazumder said. “My dad did protests like these when he was younger, so he encouraged me to fight for my rights and stand up for what I believe in.”
Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath set serious consequences last week for students, teachers and staff who “participate in inappropriate political activism.”
The consequences for students, teachers and districts for facilitating walkouts include loss of attendance-based funding if students are not properly marked absent, teacher investigations that could result in the loss of their license and school system investigations with sanctions that include a state takeover of the district.
In an interview with Houston Public Media, the President of the Texas chapter for the American Federation of Teachers, Zeph Capo, called the move an overreach by the TEA and said that the press release lacked clear instructions as to how teachers should prevent walkouts.
“We hope that the state will take a breath, step back, and provide better guidance on what to do and what not to do rather than simply putting threats on teachers and students,” he said.
Capo added that his organization questioned the legality of Abbott’s threat to withhold attendance-based funding from schools that do not mark students absent during a walkout.
An email sent Tuesday, just after 1 p.m., to parents and students that appears to be from the school’s Principal Messila Jacobs said “students who engage in speech or expression that impairs school operations and or impinges on the rights of other students will face disciplinary consequences.”
The email adds that students who walked out will be marked absent, and the consequences would be the same for any other unexcused absence.
Neither Houston ISD nor Houston Academy of International Studies responded to requests for comment.
Senior Jasmine Trujillo said that despite receiving the email discouraging students from protesting and seeing an administrator attempt to confiscate posters, she still walked out with her classmates.
“Even though there might be some risk of me possibly getting expelled or me getting suspended, I’m gonna go out here, and I’m gonna stand up for my people, because I’m Hispanic as well, and I’m not gonna let them just mistreat us like this, because we are human as well,” Trujillo said.
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