Students at more than 100 middle and high schools across Colorado are planning to walk out of class at noon on Thursday, September 4, demanding that federal immigration agents stay away from their campuses and communities. The action stretches from Denver and Aurora to Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Grand Junction and smaller towns like Alamosa and Nederland, with Denver-area participants set to rally afterward at La Alma-Lincoln Park.
The walkout is being organized by the Colorado Youth Coalition, which has published a growing list of participating schools, according to Westword. The group is co-founded by Bre Kennedy, a 16-year-old student at Grandview High School in Aurora, one of dozens of Aurora-area schools — including Eaglecrest, Overland, Rangeview, Smoky Hill, Central and Hinkley — listed as taking part. Kennedy said young people “are not willing to sit back while communities are harmed and adults in power fail to act,” adding that the walkout will show that youth voices belong in community conversations.
The coalition's list spans dozens of Denver Public Schools campuses, including East, South, North, Manual, Montbello and Abraham Lincoln high schools, along with suburban and rural districts from Broomfield's Legacy and Holy Family high schools to Montezuma-Cortez High School and Roaring Fork High School in Carbondale. Backing organizations named alongside the Colorado Youth Coalition include General Strike US, the Brown Berets of Tepetlán, Pulse Colorado, the Denver People's March, 50501 Colorado and No Concentration Camps in Colorado, per the same Westword report.
A Legal Patchwork Built Over Months
The walkout arrives amid a months-long buildup of local and state measures aimed at limiting federal immigration enforcement near schools. Colorado law already bars ICE agents from entering non-public areas of public schools without a judicial warrant, the article notes, and Denver Public Schools Administrative Policy JIH/JRA specifically extends that protection to school buses and transportation routes, according to Denver Public Schools.
In April, the Denver school board approved policies directing the superintendent to deny ICE agents access to district property, records, and students without a warrant, and designated all district properties as “safe zones” that bar School Resource Officers from sharing student or family information with federal agents, as reported by Chalkbeat. That statewide legal backdrop is reinforced by Colorado's SB21-131, enacted in 2021, which prohibits state agencies and public institutions from disclosing non-public personal identifying information to federal authorities for civil immigration enforcement without a court-issued subpoena or warrant, per the Colorado General Assembly.
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston added another layer in late February when he signed Executive Order 152, prohibiting federal immigration agents from using city-owned properties — including parks, parking lots and municipal buildings — for staging or processing operations, and directing local police to intervene if federal agents use excessive force, according to The Colorado Sun.
Part of a Wider Wave of Youth Activism
Thursday's walkout follows a mass demonstration on January 30, when thousands of Denver-area students marched to the Colorado State Capitol as part of a nationwide “ICE Out” day of action during which 1,136 Denver Public Schools teachers called out of work, Chalkbeat reported at the time. Anti-ICE walkouts have already touched schools beyond metro Denver this year, including Montbello High School, Early College Academy in Greeley, Global Leadership Academy in Mapleton and six schools within Fort Collins' Poudre School District, according to a tracker from Defending Education.
The seed report also cites incidents elsewhere that have fueled the movement: Baltimore ICE agents detained a mother and father outside an elementary school in June while they were dropping off their daughters, and local police working with ICE in both Missouri and Ohio have entered schools with lists of students' names while attempting to locate children without warrants. Christy Aguilar, quoted in the Westword piece, said children deserve to live peacefully rather than fearfully.
Other States, Other Responses
Colorado is not alone in confronting the issue. Maryland and Baltimore have enacted measures blocking ICE agents from entering school premises without a warrant, a Missouri school district has implemented its own safety protocol, and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey issued step-by-step guidance in August for K-12 schools responding to immigration enforcement. California educators have gone further still, forming patrol teams to watch for ICE agents around their campuses, per the same Westword account.
All of this activism unfolds against a reversal in federal policy: the Trump administration in 2025 rolled back guidance that had restricted ICE arrests at so-called sensitive locations, which include schools, hospitals and places of worship. That shift, combined with the Department of Homeland Security's July decision to award GEO Group a five-year contract reopening a shuttered prison in Hudson to serve as a new immigration detention facility, has kept tensions high statewide — the Hudson facility drew opposition from Colorado's U.S. senators, according to a statement from Senator John Hickenlooper's office.
District Policy Versus Student Action
Despite the layers of legal protection, Denver Public Schools does not sanction the walkouts themselves. District policy requires teachers who participate to use personal leave days, and students who leave class are marked absent, according to CBS News. The Colorado Parent Advocacy Network has pushed in the opposite direction as well, issuing a guide following earlier walkouts that urges districts to maintain balanced political viewpoints in classrooms and asserts that parents, not schools, remain the primary authority over their children's involvement in activism.
Underlying the entire debate is the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe, which held that public school districts are constitutionally prohibited under the Equal Protection Clause from denying K-12 education to children based on immigration status, according to the American Immigration Council. That precedent has become a legal anchor for districts like Denver's as they navigate pressure from both immigrant families seeking assurance and federal authorities pursuing enforcement.
For now, the plan for Thursday remains straightforward: students walk out at noon, and those in the Denver area make their way to La Alma-Lincoln Park to rally together. Whether attendance reaches the scale of January's Capitol march remains to be seen, but organizers say the list of participating schools, already exceeding 100, is still growing.
