Earlier this year, students at several high schools across Kansas organized walkouts protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
In response, the Kansas Senate has adopted a measure in an attempt to restrict student protests during the school day.
KMUW spoke with three students at Derby High School near Wichita who participated in a walkout, and asked them to talk about their experience.
Here’s more from Derby students Beronika Jurado, Ellie Swindle and Gabby Delaney:
BERONIKA: “Well, I realized that a lot of people at Derby – Mostly, at Derby, everybody doesn't really know how the migration stuff works.
A lot of the kids there that support ICE, they support ICE because their parents support it, and they don’t really know anything that's going on. And they choose not to look into it because their parents tell them that ICE is good.”
BERONIKA: “I started reaching out to a lot of people in my classes, and I started talking to them. I was like, ‘Hey, would you guys ever participate in an ICE walkout protest? And a lot of people said no because they were scared of getting suspended.”
ELLIE: “There's a part in our student handbook that says that walkouts and protests are susceptible to getting ISS or OSS (in-school suspension or out-of-school suspension), but they typically don't really end up actually doing stuff with this kind of thing.
I do think it was just an unexcused absence. But I know a lot of kids – I did this – just had their parents check them out for the last class.”
GABBY: “Yeah, you can't suspend 200 people. That's not going to happen.
But yeah, the only consequence I got is I didn't get anything done for the class. But it was a test. I could still retake the test, so I think it was totally worth it.”
BERONIKA: “We organized it so it was in the passing period before the last class. Because if it was during class, a lot of people weren't going to do it.”
GABBY: “We didn't even really meet, just people started walking out. I thought it was wonderful because there were so many people just walking out. I’m like, ‘that's crazy.’ In fact, I know the person who started all this and made the change.”
BERONIKA: “I was really scared, because as far as I knew, there [were] only like 10 people that were actually going to do it ‘cause in the group chat everybody was saying that they weren’t going to do it and they were scared.
And it was me and my friend, and we were walking out. And then when we just got out there and I saw all these people out there, that just gave me an overwhelming sense of relief because I just realized how many people were actually doing this and speaking up for the cause.”
ELLIE: “I also saw a lot of people who I generally thought were very conservative, and, you know, I thought would not do this, but had since been, like, convinced. And that felt really good.”
BERONIKA: “My mom came (to the protest). My uncle even checked out my cousin from another school in Wichita to come to the protest. … And my grandma was there. My little siblings were there. Everybody was there.
Everybody was like, posting videos in, like, a family group chat that we have with all of the family members we have here and in Mexico. And they were like, oh, yeah, we're just like, so proud that she was able to start something like this, and like, she's speaking up for us.”
ELLIE: “When we were back at the school, we were walking around the parking lot. There was a guy with a Trump flag on the back of his car, and he was driving circles around the parking lot and screaming at us.
And there [were] a lot of people saying, like, joking, I hope, but saying, you know, like, ‘I'm gonna call ICE on you guys. I'm going to tell everybody that there's, you know, undocumented immigrants at the protest.’ And I just think it's so crazy that there are so many students and parents in Derby who are so hateful.”
BERONIKA: “There [were] also a bunch of people that migrated here from other countries, that came to the United States … and they go to Derby High School, and they said that they would have done the protest, but they were scared of someone calling ICE on them.
I mean, these are my friends, and they're not doing this because of fear of getting deported.
The only reason that I haven't done any protests up to this point is because if any of my family gets in trouble, and they like, get detained by ICE, then I'm gonna have to go with them.
And that's just terrifying. … Even if it's, like, where my family is in Mexico. I've never lived there before.”
ELLIE: “This personally does not directly affect me right now, but, like, I have a lot of friends whose parents are immigrants or just friends who are people of color, and I don't think you can really go to high school and just go if you have to live in fear of just existing.
GABBY: “You get to make a decision in a few years; I feel like you need to be preparing because when you make your decision in a few years, it’s going to be really uneducated. You need to make sure that you’re educated ‘cause this affects you.”
ELLIE: “I think especially teenagers, get to ignore a lot of political things because, you know, especially living in the suburbs in America, you know, we have the option to ignore stuff. But I feel like this is something that no one should be ignoring right now.”
