About 200 Durango High School students and a smattering of supportive community members marched down Main Avenue on Friday during school hours to protest recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.
Students intentionally missed two class periods to join the crowd, which made its way through DHS property, south to downtown Durango and back again. A handful of class absences can lead to disciplinary action – but many of the students marching on Main said they were more than willing to take an attendance strike to be at the protest.
“It’s our friends out there (being taken),” 11th grader Lila Scherer-Sickler said as she marched alongside her classmates. “It’s people we know in Durango, and we just felt like, as kids, we don’t often get an opportunity to have our voice out there, and we just took the chance. A bunch of us are missing AP classes right now, (but) I think that the opportunity to get your voice out there is more important.”
The crowd of high schoolers touted handmade signs and called out chants like, “We want justice, we want peace, we want ICE up off our streets.” Many passing cars and passersby honked, smiled and waved at the crowd. Some put up their middle fingers or shook their heads. One student said a classmate intentionally blew exhaust at protesters from his car as the crowd was leaving the school.
Durango School District spokeswoman Karla Sluis told The Durango Herald in a written statement that the school was aware of the protest and “coordinated communication with local law enforcement and nearby facilities” before the march.
“We acknowledge students’ First Amendment right to express their views,” she wrote. “At the same time, we are responsible for students’ safety and education. Usual attendance policies apply, and we encourage respectful dialogue through planned, supervised events.”
The protest comes after several months of rising tensions between ICE and U.S. citizens, in Durango and nationwide.
A father and his two children were detained by ICE in October in Durango, despite having an open asylum case, and a man who had lived in Durango for 22 years was arrested in the city on New Year’s Eve.
According to reporting by The Guardian, at least eight people have died in dealings with ICE less than a month into the new year – including Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot and killed by ICE agents weeks apart.
Other people killed in interactions with ICE this year include Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, Keith Porter Jr, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Víctor Manuel Díaz, Parady La and Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz, according to The Guardian.
Eleventh grader Finn Hughes said he participated in the walkout because using his privilege as a white U.S. citizen is important.
“These are abhorrent kidnappings, and they’re happening not just in Durango, but around the nation,” he said.
Durango resident Barb Day was one of the community members who joined the protest in support of the students. She brought along a repurposed sign she used in 1968 to protest against the Vietnam War.
“We have this brutal masked secret police that are just breaking all of our constitutional rights, and people are dying,” she said. “My parents were in World War II – my dad was in the Navy, and my mom was a combat nurse – and I know what my parents fought for. And this is just so wrong. We’re losing decency.”
Liza Tregillus of the Apoyo Immigrant Partner Team also joined the protest in support of the students who marched.
“I’m very proud of them, and I think (they’re out here) because they’re losing their own friends, and their own friends are terrified,” she said. “I feel we’ve lost our democracy after 250 years, (and) we need young voters.”
Tregillus has worked closely with many immigrants in her line of work, including the father and two children – Fernando Jaramillo-Solano and his 12-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son – who were detained by ICE in Durango late last year. The family opted to self-deport back to Colombia after a month in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, but told the Herald in January through Tregillus that they feared for their safety back in Colombia.
One student, ninth grader Owen Holland, said he had a connection to the Jaramillo-Solano family.
“I have a friend who lived here, from Mexico, and he was friends with them,” he said. “And it was like, really bad for my friend. It was really bad. It’s so much different than people make it seem.”
Tregillus said the tone of a protest is important, and that leading with curiosity and solution-based efforts – rather than confrontation – can make a difference.
She said chants and signs that put the focus on immigrants being neighbors and friends, versus those that are meant to demean ICE or its agents, is one way she feels protesters can use their voices with intention.
Many of the immigrants she works with are fearful that protests with tones that attack ICE agents may make conditions worse for them, she said.
“From the immigrants, they would appreciate that our protests not be negative,” she said. “Many of them come from cultures of respect toward authority, and they’re frightened. ... They would rather we stick to a different tone. I talked to an immigrant (who had been detained by ICE), and he said every time there were protests outside when they were in lockdown, they were punished.”
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Students returned to their classes after the protest, and the demonstration remained peaceful
epond@durangoherald.com
