Students scheduled a walkout for Friday, Feb. 27 at 11 a.m. in the Skyline College Quad to demand ICE officers be held accountable for their actions.

Protest organizers used social media to call on students from all three district colleges and high schools across San Mateo County to gather as much support as possible.

This protest joins over 50 schools across the state under the California Youth Unite movement, a student group that started in January to protest ICE.

The head organizer of Skyline’s protest, Skyline student Isabella Chuong, said she followed the program and wanted to spread the movement to her district. She said she knows an organizer who facilitated the Skyline Jan. 30 walkout and asked if they would support this protest. Her friend gave her advice and Chuong gathered support from her peers.

“I started reaching out to students by announcing it in front of my classes,” Chuong said. “From there, I started gathering students’ emails who were interested in what was happening.”

She caught the attention of fellow organizers and Skyline students Albania Fuentes and El Tano, among other peers willing to lead the protest.

ICE’s Jan. 7 killing of Renée Good in Minneapolis and other ICE actions fueled protests throughout the country demanding that ICE officers be held accountable for their actions.

District students gathered at College of San Mateo and marched three miles to San Mateo Central Park on Jan. 30, stopping to hold signs along El Camino Real, gathering county residents’ attention.

Some Skyline students held their own protest in the Quad, but with less time to prepare, it was not as big as San Mateo Central Park’s protest.

Tano said that Friday’s protest will follow up on last month’s protest.

“It’s more … to keep the momentum on campus and keep students agitated about what’s happening with ICE,” Tano said. “Keep people aware that ICE is dangerous to our communities.”

Fuentes said the protest means to show the community that change does not need to come from one big event, but could come from a compilation of consistent, smaller events.

“There’s a lot of power in being in a community,” Fuentes said. “That doesn’t necessarily have to look like something big out in the street. It can happen right here on campus with other students.”

Apart from being overall confident, the three organizers also said they felt concerned about backlash they may receive.

“I feel worried for safety,” Fuentes said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now with what could happen or what will happen.”

Tano said they appreciate the Skyline administration’s support, but believe administrators could officially do more.

“They (the administration)emailed us after our walkout, and they said, ‘Just know that we’re all here for you’ but we don’t really know what (administrators) ‘being here for us’ is supposed to look like,” Tano said. “What policies do they have in place to protect our students?”

Concerns aside, the three organizers said they were grateful for the Skyline community’s support at its last protest, which motivated them to plan for Friday.

“More than ever, we need our community,” Chuong said. “Seeing this whole group of people being so eager and so excited to stand up for our beliefs gives me a newfound sense of hope during this time where we all feel kind of powerless.”

Fuentes said that their faith in the Skyline community gives them strength to organize.

“At the end of the day, your community is going to have your back,” Fuentes said.

Students from Skyline have certified with California Youth Unite that they will hold their own protest, but it remains unclear whether CSM or Cañada College students will sanction their own campus protest or join this one.