Walkouts, closures begin across Bay Area in protest against ICE crackdown

Student and employee walkouts began late Friday morning across the Bay Area, part of a national wave of protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the deaths of two people this month at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis.

High school and college students in Oakland, Berkeley, Concord, San Jose and San Mateo all planned to walk away from their classes Friday, according to posts on social media. They were among scores of similar protests being held in nearly every state across the nation, partly organized by a website that called for a “national shutdown” to end ICE funding and a stop to the agency’s “terror” campaign.

The walkouts follow a similar wave of school and work stoppages a week ago in Minneapolis, where President Donald Trump dispatched thousands of federal immigration agents in one of the largest immigration crackdowns of his year-old second term. The subsequent deaths of two people — Minneapolis mother Renee Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti — at the hands of federal agents this month has led to renewed protests against Trump’s immigration policies, recently prompting the Department of Homeland Security to begin moving some agents out of the region.

Already this week, hundreds of students walked out of classes in the East Bay and the South Bay in protest of ICE’s actions.

On Friday, hundreds of students marched through the streets of Castro Valley, eliciting honks from passing motorists, holding up traffic in some areas and holding signs proclaiming “Jesus said: Love thy neighbor” and “Beat fascism,” according to a livestream provided by Castro Valley News.

Across the bay in the Peninsula, the more than 100 students walked through downtown San Mateo around noon, rallying in San Mateo Central Park.

The Moment Japantown store in San Jose announced that it would be closed, saying “we refuse to operate ‘business as usual.'” Other businesses, including Academic Coffee in San Jose, stayed open but donated some or all of their proceeds to nonprofit organizations supporting immigrant communities. The San Jose Museum of Art offered free admission “to provide our community a space for reflection, healing and connection.”

Alejandra Argueta, a 17-year-old senior at El Camino High School, was among the students who walked out of class Friday and joined a protest in South San Francisco.

Argueta said she felt compelled to participate because staying silent was not an option.

“Just because it’s not happening to you doesn’t mean you’re supposed to sit back and watch everything unfold,” she said, adding that while the Bay Area may feel more insulated than other parts of the country, she said “it’s only a matter of time until things get worse.”

For Argueta, immigration enforcement and civil rights were her main concerns concerns.

She criticized deportations she said are being carried out without due process, particularly those involving families and children. “They said they were only going to deport criminals, but as we can see they’re deporting little people — including little children,” she said. “There’s no way that children who haven’t even gotten to middle school are criminals.”

Kylan Denny, an international relations major at Stanford University graduating next year, attended the walkout at White Plaza known as the free speech zone at her university, out of frustration with what she described as the systematic targeting of marginalized communities across the country.

“For me, this isn’t a single tragedy — it’s one of many,” Denny said. “There are so many people who haven’t had strikes called in their name or people walk out for them.”

Denny said recognizing those overlooked stories is what motivates her to protest.

“Everyone is implicated and everyone is affected whether we like it or not,” she said. “There is a story out there of someone you can personally relate to, and for me, that’s enough to get me out here.”

Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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