UNION SQUARE (PIX11) — Students from some two dozen high schools across the city walked out of class on Tuesday in a protest of federal policies that they said threaten their and their classmates’ futures.
They gathered at a midday rally that organizers said was meant to educate themselves and the rest of the city.
“It’s showing kids how to be involved, and showing kids how accessible getting involved is,” said Theo Mikesell, one of the leaders of the group We The Students NYC, which organized the walkout and rally.
The hundreds who gathered at the southern end of Union Square said that they’d come together to speak out against a variety of Trump administration policies, especially ones that affect them most strongly.
Luis Riberon, a high school senior, said that, among the issues to which the protest was meant to draw attention, is “funding for our education, especially college, federal funding being taken away.”
Maxanne Wallace Segall, a sophomore and protester who also helped to organize the rally, said that another major issue was “the fact about deportation, [and] not following due process.”
She was referring to an issue that was front and center at the protest, which involves a public high school student at a campus 13 miles north of the Union Square rally. At ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a public school in Marble Hill, on the Bronx-Manhattan line, a 20-year-old student in a special program there for older, new immigrants trying to prepare for college was detained by ICE agents last week, and remains in custody.
The plight of the detained student, whose first name, Dylan, has been disclosed by his family, was among many topics that were in the spotlight at the rally.
Hasan Shafiquallah, an attorney for the city’s Legal Aid Society, said that the detained student’s situation underscored why protests like the one in Union Square are so important.
“He was in court with his mother for his court date,” Shafiquallah said. “He’s not a flight risk. He’s not a danger to anyone.”
Shafiqullah spoke with PIX11 News after being a guest speaker at the student walkout rally.
“They held him for no reason,” the Legal Aid attorney continued, “other than to send a message that we can get you, anywhere.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request from PIX11 News for comment.
The Legal Aid lawyer, though, said that the walkout and protest speak strongly for the long term.
“If people stand up, from high school students on up, across the country,” Shafiquallah said, “we have a chance of not losing our democracy.”
Regarding the detained public school student, New York City Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said in a statement:
“New York City Public Schools stands firmly with our students, including our immigrant students, and our schools will always be safe spaces for them. Our hearts go out to the student who was detained by ICE, and we are deeply saddened for their family. While this incident did not occur on school grounds, we want to reassure our families: we will continue to speak out and advocate for the safety, dignity, and rights of all of our students. Our commitment to supporting every child and family, regardless of immigration status, has not changed. Our schools remain safe spaces, and we encourage families to continue to send their children to school.”
The statement did not address the student walkout. While that walkout did result in students filling up the southern end of Union Square, shoulder to shoulder, it was still just a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of students in New York City public high schools.
The majority of high school students city-wide are Black and Latino, while the majority of the crowd at the protest, as acknowledged by some of the organizers, were not. They said that the reasons for that are pertinent.
“A lot of my friends of color, they’re actually immigrants, a lot of my Latino friends,” said Cecilia Beauchamp, one of the organizers of We The Students NYC.
“I’m Puerto Rican, but I am a citizen here,” Beauchamp continued. “A lot of my Latino friends couldn’t come because they said their parents wouldn’t allow them because they’re immigrants. They’re not legally here.”
Beauchamp said that this was the first of what is planned to be a series of events that We The Students NYC is organizing. The next one is scheduled for June 14, according to organizers.