Rim of the World High School Students Protest
Locally- January 30th 2026, 100 of our local High School Rim of the World students joined in a nationwide protest against recent killings by immigration enforcement by walking out of school and protesting.
While immigration raids have unnerved immigrant communities, the walkout showed how students have transformed that fear into organized action.
One high-profile walkout included a march on the Capitol by several Sacramento-area schools, but there were protests in every region of the state on both K-12 and college campuses.
Students all across the state spilled out of schools holding signs that took aim at immigration and the Trump administration: “Abolish ICE,” “Education not deportation,” “Raise hell, melt ICE” and “Stop detaining children.”
That last slogan references a photograph of 5-year-old Luis Conejo Ramos, who was detained after coming home from school in Minneapolis, but other children and teens have been detained, including a 15-year-old, who was handcuffed at gunpoint by immigration authorities last August during school registration in Los Angeles.
Vowing to stand in solidarity with those affected by ICE, a group of Fresno State students shared resources and distributed beaded bracelets with the ICE hotline printed on them in the university’s free speech zone.
“In the first month of 2026 — and we’re not even done yet — six people have died in ICE custody,” said a student with a megaphone at UC Davis, who recounted the stories of Keith Porter Jr., Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, who were all killed by ICE agents. The student then led a large crowd chanting, “Shame!”
Organizers behind the protests and walkouts called on Americans not to work, attend school or shop on Friday as part of a nationwide shutdown. It came a week after Minnesota conducted its own general shutdown in response to the immigration enforcement killings of Good and Pretti in Minneapolis.
The protest was endorsed by nearly 2,000 organizations across the country, including the California Faculty Association, which represents faculty in the California State University system.
California student groups who also endorsed the action include the MECHa at UC Merced and CSU Dominguez Hills, College Democrats at UC Irvine, UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, UC Berkeley Young Democratic Socialists of America and Students for Quality Education at CSU Channel Islands.
As calls for a “national shutdown” circulated on social media, Fresno Unified School District informed families that school remained open but encouraged students to express themselves safely on campus.
“School sites are prepared to support student expression on campus and will provide appropriate guidance, resources, and opportunities for respectful dialogue within a safe school environment,” Fresno Unified said in an announcement late Thursday. “We respect our students’ voices and their right to express themselves on issues that matter to them.”
The district’s statement warned students that off-campus activity during the day would result in an unexcused absence. Still, students from Fresno, McLane and Sunnyside high schools walked out in protest.
The California Department of Education said it has been receiving questions from local districts about how to handle the walkouts, according to CDE spokesman Scott Roark. It noted that the education code explicitly states that middle or high school students are allowed to be absent from school for purposes of engaging in a “civic or political event,” provided the student notifies the school in advance. Students may have one such absence, unless they seek permission for additional absences from a school administrator.
Some school systems, such as the San Francisco Unified School District, cited that legislation in a statement to families, noting that absences would be excused if the school was notified in advance. The district said that “free speech is a protected right and something our school district takes seriously.”
Friday’s protests haven’t been the only anti-ICE protests by students. East Bay students staged a large all-day walkout on Wednesday, according to NBC Bay Area. The Daily Bruin reported that 1,000 students participated in a campus protest on Wednesday.
Immigration authorities have conducted highly publicized raids in Minnesota most recently, but Los Angeles, the Central Valley and many other California communities have also been targets of raids.
Most of the children of undocumented parents in the United States are U.S. citizens, though approximately 83,000 California children are undocumented themselves, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).
These raids have struck fear in immigrant communities, leading some families to keep their children at home, especially when raids are happening nearby, according to Julie Sugarman, associate director for K-12 education research at MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy. Many students have a family member who is undocumented or know someone in their community who is. It can be especially hard to explain immigrant enforcement actions to the youngest children.
“They see a child taken away from their parents and that’s the scariest thing in the world to them — and you can see how distracting that would be,” she said.
