Students from Miami Dade College’s Homestead campus and several area high schools staged a walkout Wednesday to protest the immigration proposals of President-elect Donald Trump. The students rallied outside Homestead City Hall to push for an ordinance to declare Homestead a “Sanctuary City" and ask administrators to make each of their schools so-called sanctuary campuses.
#Homestead area high school students walk out of class in #SanctuaryCampus #protests against #DonaldTrump @Telemundo51 @AlejandroIT51 pic.twitter.com/xJ52n4VwMN— JRodriguez (@JRodzMIA) November 16, 2016
Students at Florida International University and dozens of other college campuses around the country staged similar actions Wednesday as part of an effort spearheaded by the immigrants rights group Cosecha to push schools to develop policies that would protect students from deportations and hardline immigration enforcement under a Trump presidency.
Trump put divisive rhetoric on immigration at the center of his campaign, vowing to build a wall on the Southern border and calling for a “total ban” of Muslims entering the U.S. He repeatedly denounced sanctuary cities like San Francisco, and appeared at rallies with the family members of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants.
In an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes that aired Sunday, Trump said he plans to deport between two and three million undocumented immigrants upon taking office. It was not clear exactly where those numbers came from. Trump vowed to prioritize enforcement against people with criminal records, singling out “gang members” and “drug dealers.” However, there are nowhere near two or three million undocumented immigrants with criminal records for Trump to deport. The most common violations that resulted in deportations under the Obama administration have been minor crimes like illegal re-entry or driving without a license.
“We accept that Trump is our next president,” said Saúl Alemán, one of the organizers of the walkout in Homestead. “But if he promises to deport us, we’re going to show him that this country eats out of the hands of undocumented immigrants.”
Trump has also promised to roll back President Obama’s executive orders on immigration, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that has given 750,000 immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children temporary authorization to study and work in the U.S.
Dozens of students from Homestead Senior High School, South Dade Senior High School and Keys’ Gate Charter High School walked out of classes at 11 a.m. “Up up with education, down, down with deportation,” chanted students holding signs that read “Here to Stay” and “Don’t separate families.”
Administrators and @MiamiSchoolsPD securing Homestead Senior High in anticipation of anti-Trump walkout pic.twitter.com/JRQ6lVykSA— WIOD (@WIOD) November 16, 2016
One student told CBS 4 he'd jumped the fence after his school was placed on lockdown, to protect "our freedom of assembly."
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