OAKLAND — Dozens of students walked out of class at Oakland High School for the second time in a month, marching through a busy city neighborhood Monday to protest sweeping federal raids on migrant communities across the country, including in California.
The students, aware of a renewed focus by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement on deporting migrants, directed their demonstration primarily toward President Donald Trump, but also railed against Oakland Unified School District leaders who recently approved layoffs of nearly 100 employees.
Among the cuts are 10 jobs in the district’s Newcomer Program, which offers special help for immigrant students, primarily those from refugee and asylum-seeking families.
The march proceeded a mile west from the Oakland High campus on MacArthur Boulevard to the city’s bustling Grand Lake neighborhood.
“It’s very scary, and really hard to think about,” Viola Garcia, an Oakland High eleventh-grader, said of the atmosphere around her community in light of Trump’s ramp-up of deportation efforts.
“People try to tell us, ‘Don’t think about it, try to stay away from it, it’s not going to do you any good,’” she said. “But I think as the next generation, we can’t stand down and not do anything about it. This is our future we’re fighting for.”
Garcia said her Oakland High teachers are supportive of the protests, having taught her about the history of the Ohlone people, who lived where the town is now for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers — the “real immigrants,” she said.
The students, who said they planned both Monday’s walkout and a protest on Feb. 13 themselves, received help organizing the march from a local chapter of By Any Means Necessary, a national activist group.
“We had some of the students telling us they wanted to organize a walkout,” said Jose Lagos, an organizer with the group and Oakland resident. “We wanted to support them.”
The demonstration featured signs that read “An Immigrant Sanctuary Means Safe for Immigrants, Unsafe for ICE Scum” and an expletive directed toward Trump, whose pre-election promise to carry out mass deportations is taking shape early into his second term.
ICE operations have rapidly escalated nationwide, including a particularly aggressive raid in January that rounded up 78 people in Bakersfield, leaving migrants across California fearful.
That same month, San Jose officials confirmed ICE activity in the city, vowing not to assist the agency in any enforcement it carried out. Immigration activists say some migrant families are avoiding time spent in public out of fear they may be picked up by ICE agents.
San Jose and Oakland are among the cities that, like California itself, have sanctuary laws prohibiting local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
The cities have also joined a sprawling federal lawsuit filed last month against the Trump Administration over its threats to withhold billions of dollars in funding from city and state governments that have such laws protecting migrants.
Oakland’s schools, meanwhile, are coming to terms with financial troubles that have loomed over the district for years after federal COVID relief dollars ran out. Cuts made last week are part of a larger restructuring of the district, which has 80 schools and last year enrolled roughly 45,000 students.
The protesting students sharply criticized the school board for eliminating jobs meant to make life easier for immigrants. They were flanked by a couple Oakland educators who are also affiliated with the By Any Means Necessary organization.
“We’ve been fighting against any cuts to Newcomers,” said Mark Airgood, who teaches eighth-grade math at Sojourner Truth Virtual Academy, an online-only K-12 school in Oakland. “I think we can still reverse those cuts.”
The remote academy, which expanded during the pandemic, mainly helps students with family members who need at-home care, but Airgood said it now serves another use — for those families staying indoors for fear of deportation.
Staff writers Caelyn Pender and Grace Hase contributed reporting.
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.