Students at high schools across New Orleans staged mass walkouts on Tuesday (Jan. 20) to protest federal immigration enforcement efforts in the city and across the country.
The two-hour demonstrations — which were student-organized and run — occurred at Benjamin Franklin High School in the Lake Terrace/Lake Oaks neighborhood, NOCCA Arts Conservatory in the Bywater and New Harmony High School in St. Claude.
The Ben Franklin walkout happened during the school’s second period. It included homemade signs, chants and several speeches. Students in high-visibility vests served as security as hundreds marched from the school to a nearby field and back.
The NOCCA and New Harmony walkouts happened later in the day and included a march to City Hall.
Diego Torres-Copeland, communications director for Students for Resistance, the group that organized the Ben Franklin walkout, said he felt spurred to action after seeing news of the death of Renee Good, a Minnesota woman who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent.
“ I feel like I can't sit at home and just watch the Instagram reels about people protesting anymore and liking them and reposting them to my story,” Torres-Copeland, 16, said. “That just doesn't feel like enough anymore. And I felt like I needed to do this as a service to my community.”
Torres-Copeland’s father immigrated from Ecuador as a child. As a Latino, he said the way federal immigration agents are treating immigrants resonates with him on a deeply personal level.
“ This… the way the U.S. has alienated and discriminated [against] our Latino people has always been a prominent thing in my life,” he said. “And I've always [seen it] firsthand, secondhand, what is happening. And I've always been shown it.”
Emily McDonald, founder and president of Students for Resistance, said she viewed the protest as a way to represent communities that may not be able to represent themselves.
“I wanted to give people a way to use their privilege to their advantage and do something,” McDonald, 16, said. “A lot of Hispanic communities can't stand up. They physically don't have the ability to, but we do.
“We're in a situation where we live in a pretty liberal city. I'm a white girl, I'm young, and I have the ability to resist. And so I want to take advantage of that instead of just sitting at home and doing nothing.”
Torres-Copeland and McDonald said they chose Tuesday for the demonstrations because it was the second anniversary of Trump’s inauguration.
ICE agents have been in New Orleans since December, conducting a sweep the government dubbed “Catahoula Crunch.” The operation’s stated goal is to arrest 5,000 people, although the ethics of that claim remain under question by local officials, as reported by the Louisiana Illuminator. The federal government also deployed approximately 350 Louisiana National Guard members to New Orleans last month to provide extra security for major events like New Year's and Mardi Gras.
More recently, the Associated Press reported that the operation is winding down in favor of an increased presence in Minnesota, though this does not mean that there will no longer be immigration officials in Louisiana.
