At 2pm on January 20th, around 300 students walked out for 25 minutes to stand against ICE. Organizers Alex Cho and Ant Rodriguez spoke on behalf of Renee Good hoping to raise awareness to the fellow students at Dominion along with protesting against the current issues surrounding ICE.
Rodriguez, the SCA President, started the walkout by having everyone circle the school hallways counterclockwise, then meet outside near the back of the school where students joined for chants and speeches. Chants like “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” and “Abolish ICE!” were repeated among the group along the walk towards the back of the school.
In Rodriguez’s speech, he stated that ICE has changed its enforcement tactics, described an increase in violence during operations, and urged community members to contact elected officials in response.
Rodriguez said, “Renee Good is not an outlier, she is a part of a public statistic where 25 people within the last year were shot by ICE agents.” After he finished his sentence a student in the crowd yelled, “Shame!” where a few other students chanted along.
Fellow organizer Ivan Londergan stated, “Everybody who is going against ICE are all adults, but we’re the youth, and we have a voice too, so we want to speak our voice as youth against ICE to show the administration and ICE that not just adults are against ICE, but youths are against ICE too.”
A walkout participant, Aiden Clark talked about why he decided to participate. “I just want to participate in any way that I can. This is just really meaningful to me especially since my mom is an immigrant so it means a lot because I’m so connected to it,” Clark said.
Another participant AJ Hossain then stepped in and said, ““[being here] means to protest against ICE and to speak out about what is wrong.”
After about 25 minutes, teachers and staff began to send students back inside the school. While on the walk back in, Kaylee Tinker said, “I feel like I just need to show my support as a citizen of LCPS and of America to show that I stand by that this isn’t right.” Tinker also touched on the importance of Dominion participating in this walkout, “I think it’s definitely a start, and it’ll show other people that they shouldn’t be afraid to stand up for what they believe in.”
The attention surrounding this walkout has caused a widespread awareness of students who care deeply on this topic. Rodriguez said, “I feel that it is not only my right, but also duty as a hispanic in this country who’s had practically every privilege I could possibly ask for to stand up for the other people who can’t stand up for themselves because they’re scared of something like deportation or higher repercussions. I‘m 17 and the worst that I can get is detention.”
A student from Rock Ridge High School originally started the posts spreading awareness on the ICE walkout throughout the county on Instagram and created the account @lcpsschools.againstice. The Dominion @dhsstudentsagainstice account originated from Alex Cho and Hannah Yonas.
Cho claimed she had spent weeks planning. She said, “I’m really hoping to achieve a number of things. It’ll bring our school together because I know our school isn’t always together in terms of being a community. Again spreading awareness, I really want this to show up on the news, we contacted other mass media. We don’t know for sure if they’re going to be there [Loudoun Now]. I just want people talking about this at school. It’s a really real issue and everyone needs to be aware of the current events in the world right now.”
The walkout drew lots of attention as Loudoun Now was there covering the walkout and posted Students Hold Walkout Across Loudoun to Protest ICE Actions, as well as coverage from NBC News 4 recording a live video hovering from a helicopter at the walkout.
