Over 150 Niles North students participated in an organized walkout during sixth period on Friday, March 6, gathering in protest against the continuous government deployment of U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents in our community and throughout the country. 

The walkout was organized via an Instagram post, and the plan spread like wildfire across social media and word of mouth. Students met in the main lobby before exiting school at approximately 12:15 pm during the passing period between periods five and six. 

The determined group of advocates repeatedly circled the school’s perimeter, holding national flags as well as hand-made signs and megaphones to articulate their vehement condemnation of the ICE agenda.

“The walkout was not about how many people were there or how much attention we got,” sophomore walkout participant Coco Ullrich said. “It was about showing our community that we have got their back.”

Despite the intention of the walkout not being about numbers or publicity, the turnout and community reaction was pleasantly surprising. Nearly a quarter of our school participated in the march, and the protest was met with overwhelming support; cars passing from the highway and around the mall honked in encouragement, and the group only seemed to expand in size and energy.

Toward the end of the rally, the students congregated at Door 1, and a few people took the chance to speak to the collective and share some profound words of empowerment, demonstrating the potency of organized resistance, no matter the scale. 

“Showing resistance–even acts as small as 150 kids walking out of class for a period–is extremely important,” one participant said while reflecting on the walkout. “Anything that shows we won’t stand for the atrocities being committed against our people signifies hope and drives future action.”

Despite the rain, the students marched with passion, determination, and fervor; they returned later in the school day with a refreshed sense of pride and accomplishment after uniting to vocalize their beliefs. Their message, while vehement, was quite lucid, holding power in its simplicity: ICE out.

ICE is a federal law enforcement agency and a faction of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Initially, ICE was created in 2003 as a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was established as a more thoroughly organized method of preventing future terrorism, integrating interior enforcements with exterior immigration services to better coordinate national security. 

However, since the turn of the last decade–and more so since President Trump first took office in 2016–ICE’s actions have deviated more and more from its original purpose, losing direction and blurring the line between defense and violence. ICE became a catalyst for discrimination and inequity years ago, but in the past sixteen months following Trump’s second inauguration, the situation has only worsened. ICE agents have been deployed like clockwork to numerous cities all over the country.

ICE’s current objective is to eliminate criminal activity and “threats to national security” by the group that, despite the presence of objectively much more pressing perils in our country, they deem the most dangerous: undocumented immigrants. 

Their plan of action is to locate, detain, and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, regardless of if their home country is dangerously corrupt; regardless of if they are an otherwise law-abiding member of society; regardless of if they have children, a spouse, a job, or have spent years, even decades building a life in the United States. 

In fact, actual immigration status is becoming of less and less importance to ICE. ICE no longer needs a warrant or a legal reason to believe someone lacks the required immigration documents. They are now legally permitted by the court of law to profile and obtain individuals based only on appearance: the color of their skin, their perceived ethnicity, their English fluency, their accent, etc. 

So, yes, an ICE agent can see a mother walking her dog whose skin is darker than theirs, who speaks differently than they do, who looks differently than they do, and use this as a basis to identify her as a “threat” and take her into custody.

Despite today’s political landscape, it wasn’t always this way. Under the Obama administration, President Obama was very adamant about utilizing ICE exclusively to remove active threats from the country, not innocent immigrants, regardless of their immigration status. 

“We’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security. Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day,” President Obama said in 2014. 

Obama recognized that most undocumented immigrants came to the U.S. for a better life: to flee war, poverty, or a corrupt government; to find a career or a proper education; to seize an opportunity at a better upbringing for their children. 

Obama explained that whether an individual entered the country legally or illegally was ultimately irrelevant. What matters is not displacing those who lack the required documents, but repairing the corrupt immigration system which makes obtaining these documents so inaccessible for those in need. 

“Tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic… It’s also not who we are as Americans,” President Obama said. “After all, most of these immigrants have been here a long time. They work hard, often in tough, low-paying jobs. They support their families. They worship at our churches. Many of their kids are American-born or spent most of their lives here, and their hopes, dreams, and patriotism are just like ours. As my predecessor, President Bush, once put it: ‘They are a part of American life’.” 

Today, however, ICE’s reputation reads more like a criminal record, a list of flagrant human rights violations. Some of the most egregious instances include:

22 Jan. 2026, Columbia Heights, Minn. : ICE officials detain 5-year-old Liam Ramos in his home driveway after he returns from preschool. They force Ramos to knock on his own front door, using him as bait to lure his father out of the house and detain him as well. They transport both to a detention center in Texas despite the Ramos family having a certified asylum case from Ecuador.

20 Jan. 2026, St. Paul, Minn. : ICE officials conduct a violent, warrant-less raid of the house of ChongLy Thao, a Hmong man and documented U.S. citizen, and force him outside in sub-freezing conditions before strip-searching him in the street without consent.

7 Jan. 2026, Minneapolis, Minn. : ICE officials enter Hennepin County Medical Center lacking a judicial warrant. They remain in the hospital for over 24 hours, detaining critically ill–even immobilized–individuals who are incapable of defending themselves. ICE goes so far as to handcuff a patient to their hospital bed to interrogate them for hours on end.

6 Sep. 2025, Chicago, Ill. : “Operation Midway Blitz” is enacted. ICE swarms Chicago, detaining people near schools and child care centers; in some cases, they use physical violence, tear gas, or other chemical agents to force compliance. ICE arrests 1,600 individuals and transports them to detention centers across thirteen different states.

Summer 2025, Los Angeles, Calif. : Trump orders a mass deployment of ICE alongside the National Guard to L.A.–a city nearly 50% composed of those of Latino or Hispanic origin. They raid schools, grocery stores, churches, workplaces, and homes. Townspeople are afraid to leave their houses, to venture downtown, or to take public transportation. Bus ridership decreases by 1.5 million rides. Some universities shift toward online schooling due to lack of students attending class. Racial bullying increases in high schools, causing average attendance to drop. Vendors close shops; immigrant communities become ghost towns. 

Feb. 2025: ICE detains and deports more people across multiple states (including Colorado, California, and Ohio) in the first three weeks of the month than they have in any single month over the prior seven years.

The list is objectively appalling, and it grows in length and severity every day. The atrocities don’t cease within ICE’s custody; if anything, they intensify.

“Many ICE agents have been trained to violate the constitution,” said sophomore Alexis Carreon, an active advocate and participant in the recent walkout. “For example, raping women in ICE detentions centers, mass deporting people without due process… and silencing those who need support most.”

The instances of misconduct Carreon refers to have been proven true time and time again. At least two dozen ICE officials have faced criminal charges in recent years, their offenses including patterns of physical and sexual abuse within detention centers. The Trump Administration only encourages this behavior, arguing that ICE agents have “absolute immunity” for their actions while on duty.  

The latest reports estimate that twenty-three people have died in ICE custody in 2026 thus far, and thirty-two in 2025, meaning last year had the highest ICE detention death toll since 2004. As of mid February, eight people have been fatally shot by ICE or U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) this year, notably Renée Good (age thirty-seven) on 7. Jan., and Alex Pretti (age thirty-seven) on 24 Jan. 

All the while, public reports and messages from the DHS and Trump Administration use the label “illegal aliens” in a professional context as the legal term to refer to the people they are targeting.

“Even if the operations were aimed towards criminals, their tactics are harmful and inhumane,” Ullrich said. “The Trump Administration and ICE dehumanize people daily by calling people ‘illegal aliens’ while they are just any other person trying to look for a better life.”

There are over 53 million immigrants in the United States as a whole, and hundreds in Skokie alone. Look around any Niles North classroom; chances are, there is at least one person in the room whose parents were born outside of the U.S.

Immigrants don’t just make up much of our country and community; they strengthen our country and community, providing services and resources that stimulate our economy and contribute largely to the very infrastructure of our society. So much effort and resilience, only to be antagonized by the very civilization they carry on their shoulders.

And all for the purpose of “protecting our country”. The counter-productivity is glaringly obvious: how does displacing millions of immigrants protect a country that is, at its core, made of immigrants?

Unless you are of Native American descent, you, too, come from immigrants. Donald Trump comes from immigrants. J.D. Vance comes from immigrants. Robert Francis Kennedy (RFK) comes from immigrants. 

The truth is hidden in plain sight under a flimsy semblance of “national security”: this isn’t about protection against foreign threats; this is about racism and xenophobia.

In fact, the entire concept of “national security” has been diluted nearly to the point of meaninglessness, reduced to a poor excuse for discrimination. According to recent court records, only 1.64% of immigration cases sought deportation orders actually based on alleged criminal activity within the country, and crime rates have decreased by over 60% since the immigrant population has more than doubled between 1980-2022.

Would ICE have assaulted Mr. Thao, a Hmong-American, law-abiding citizen, if he had been a white man with the same legal records? Would ICE have disregarded the Ramos family’s asylum case if it had been the Robertson family instead? The pattern speaks for itself.

Instead of defending our country by identifying threats of terrorism or violence… ICE itself has become the violence. 

“ICE has killed people; it has torn families apart, and it has made it a risk for immigrants and citizens to walk peacefully in public with the fear of them being arrested without due process and their families being unaware until it is too late,” Carreon said.

“With the walkout, we wanted to bring awareness to the federal immigration policies and enforcement actions,” Ullrich said. “These policies have allowed federal agents to use military tactics and equipment to deport, kill, and seriously injure innocent people.”

“The purpose was to show support for the people whose lives were affected by ICE, and to tell ICE to get out,” said sophomore protester Erica Henry. “I think ICE is horrible.”

Immigrants are not a threat to the stability of our country and its democracy; ICE is. Immigrants are not invading our communities; ICE is. Immigrants are everywhere and they have been since the dawn of our country. 

If every single immigrant in the United States is deported, what will even be left of our country? What will we do when our teachers, neighbors, first responders, technicians, friends, peers, healthcare providers, even soldiers that have risked their lives for our country are all gone? We will be a shell of a society that allowed racism, fear, and hate dressed as patriotism to destroy itself from the inside-out.

As students, as Americans, and, most essentially, as humans, we’ve had enough, and the nearly 200 people that walked out of school earlier this month are doing their part and taking the initiative to fight back.

“The overall goal of the walkout was to help students realize that they, too, can have an impact,” said one protester. “I also strongly believe that even smaller scale organized acts of resistance are extremely important in the context of broader change because they spill over and encourage others to go and speak up for what they believe in.”

“Especially because we are high-schoolers and not often taken seriously,” the protester explained. “I feel that I speak for a lot of students when I say that demonstrations such as this walkout help me feel empowered and give me hope for larger societal growth.”

To preserve the safety, equity, harmony, functionality, and authenticity of our country, change must happen. A truly free and liberated America cannot exist under ICE’s current agenda. No one understands that more than the youth, the generation that will have to reap the future consequences of the current administration’s actions, that will have to rebuild a corrupt society if such inequities continue. 

As we saw with the Niles North walkout, the power of organized resistance has remained intact and robust over centuries of fighting: fighting for independence from Great Britain, for the abolition of slavery, for women’s right to vote, for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Regardless of your stance on ICE, last week’s walkout restored hope in our ability to come together as Americans to take action and stand for our beliefs. 

The walkout was about the student body as a collective and the common goals we mutually represent for the greater good, but it was also about us as individuals, our own principles, beliefs, experiences, and personal connections that drove us to support this cause. Change can be quiet–school news articles or social media posts–or loud–walkouts, riots, conventions, rallies. It can take months or it can take centuries. It can be an allusive whisper in passing or it can be right in front of your face. It could be on the other side of the world or in the parking lot of your high school. 

But one thing remains constant: the movement has room for you. Even if you didn’t participate in the walkout, there is room. Even if you’re not sure where you stand as of now, there is room. Even if you are hesitant about using your voice, there is room. 

“Take time to think about it,” said Ullrich. “How much do you care about injustice? If you really care, don’t be afraid to do what’s right.”

“I urge those on the fence to please think about those who really need our help and support,” said Carreon. “We need to be able to provide for these people as a community because we rely on each other. We need to have a strong support system so everyone can work together to abolish the hate and the problems that the government has made for all of us, especially when these problems include us being divided. It brings out the worst in us and makes us do unspeakable things to each other.”

“If you’re on the fence, you should decide based on wanting to make an impact and because of your beliefs and values, not because you are scared of getting in trouble or because you don’t think others will do it with you,” said Henry.

“Do it,” one protester said. “Do it all, no matter how inconsequential you think it is. Go and speak out against them, make flyers, participate in protests, post on your Instagram story; any sort of publicity helps because the only way to change things is to show that we won’t stand for it. It will help drive the broader movement and hopefully contribute to some actual change in our society.”

Defiance, unity, and nonconformity has shaped American history. It’s refreshing to see that our resolve has not crumbled, that these principles continue to be prevalent and important among today’s youth. In walking out, Niles North students spoke for the people whose voices are silenced, marched for the people who fear leaving their homes, and united as one to exercise our constitutional freedom of assembly. Passion, initiative, and kindness will always be our most powerful virtues, no matter the cause we are fighting for. That day, they fought for our community, our loved ones, our rights, our future, and for all of those who have suffered at the hands of ICE. 

Most importantly, they fought for our country, for the America promised to us in our constitution and that we swear by in our Pledge of Allegiance:

One nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.