The walkout carried an immediate school-day consequence: students who left without an excused absence were marked unexcused. Roughly 430 students across seven Santa Fe schools walked out around lunchtime Wednesday, spanning grades six through 12, but only a few dozen reached the planned rally point in the Santa Fe Place mall parking lot.
The student-organized walkout was not initiated by the district, according to Searchlight New Mexico. J.J. Luévano, a junior at Capital High School, said headlines about arrests at a local construction site prompted her to organize the protest. She created an Instagram account and coordinated with students at three other south-side schools. Santa Fe High School senior Genoveva Zuniga started a separate account to mobilize students on the east side after checking on a close family friend who works in construction; the two organizers began working together despite never having met in person.
Of the 105 students who walked out of Milagro, 85 returned to class later the same day, the outlet reported. At the planned endpoint in the Santa Fe Place mall parking lot, students waved Mexican flags, danced and chanted.
Why Students Say They Marched
Mateo Garcia, a seventh-grader at Milagro who comes from an immigrant family and was born in the United States, said President Donald Trump had no right to remove innocent people from the country, and that he feared losing his own family if immigration authorities took them. Amaris Ortiz, a seventh grader at Milagro Middle School, said students had to support their community. Giselle Garcia, a sixth-grader at Ortiz Middle School, said the walkout was meant to support immigrants and to stop and abolish ICE.
The protest followed a raid the week before the walkout, when federal immigration agents hit a Santa Fe housing construction site and arrested several people, according to the same account. It also came months after an August arrest outside a medical clinic, in which ICE agents detained a man taking his daughter in for care; attorneys and advocates said he was jailed for several weeks despite having legal status. Santa Fe Rapid Response, a volunteer group that fact-checks and responds to local reports of federal immigration agents, said that August stretch alone involved at least 15 arrests over roughly a week — a surge the group said this month's reports have since surpassed.
Schools and Police Respond
Santa Fe Public Schools emailed families about the walkout the Tuesday before, warning that students leaving campus without an excused absence or proper procedures would be marked absent, and that parents or guardians would need to call their school directly for any walkout-related absence to be excused. The district said the protest was not initiated or promoted by Santa Fe Public Schools, and that student safety was its highest priority, encouraging families to discuss staying on campus and attending school as scheduled because the district considers schools the safest place for students during the school day.
The district coordinated with police during the walkout, and the Santa Fe Police Department's Real Time Operations Center monitored the demonstrations using a drone. Interim Police Chief Ben Valdez said the drone monitoring was meant to ensure traffic stayed unobstructed and that both participants and community members remained safe, and he said no criminal activity was observed or reported as a result of the walkout. Santa Fe Rapid Response members, including Darby Begeman, stood in the mall parking lot with whistles around their necks after the group received a request to watch for any ICE presence near the rally; Begeman said she was heartened that students were paying attention and concerned.
Part of a Wider Pattern
Wednesday's walkout wasn't Santa Fe's first. Hundreds of Santa Fe High students staged a similar protest on Feb. 6, and students at smaller campuses including The MASTERS Program and Mandela International Magnet School have also walked out this year, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, which reported that around 275 students left campuses on Wednesday, Feb. 25 — a different count than the roughly 430 cited in Wednesday's walkout coverage. Albuquerque schools have seen student walkouts of their own in recent weeks, the paper noted.
The unrest isn't confined to New Mexico. More than 180 Colorado schools were expected to join a statewide “ICE Out” walkout organized by the Colorado Youth Coalition and 50501 Colorado on Sept. 4, according to The Denver Post, which noted a similar January protest drew thousands of students and community members and prompted some schools to cancel or delay classes after teachers called out. In Fresno, students walked out on a Friday to protest ICE activity in the area, and the Fresno Unified School District told KMPH that its schools are safe and welcoming and that it does not collect or maintain information about students' immigration status.
A National Enforcement Surge
Immigrant advocates and local elected officials have told Source New Mexico that they've seen a sharp increase in federal immigration arrests in Albuquerque in recent days, with ICE's own July data showing the agency detained 51,000 people that month, its highest monthly total during Trump's second term. An Immigrant Law Center coordinator described the recent enforcement increase as possibly the biggest surge in New Mexico since Trump began his second term in January 2025. The Department of Homeland Security has reported all-time record arrest totals for July and August, though September figures had not yet been disclosed.
What ICE Arrest Data Show in New Mexico
A year-over-year comparison provides a state-level measure of the increase: according to Source New Mexico’s analysis of ICE records, the agency reported 1,853 arrests in New Mexico by Oct. 15, 2025, compared with 128 by the same date in 2024. These figures count arrests reported by ICE; on their own, they do not quantify other enforcement encounters or the number of people affected.
The effects are showing up in classrooms well beyond Santa Fe. Chalkbeat has reported that ICE activity near schools has driven up chronic absenteeism and fueled mental-health struggles and fear in affected communities; officials at one Indianapolis school said its usual 95% daily attendance rate dropped below 40% during a nearby ICE operation. In Montclair, New Jersey, four people were detained near an elementary school during student drop-off. ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations describes its mission as enforcing immigration law within the U.S. interior, relying on statutory authority to arrest people it determines present threats to public safety or undermine immigration law.
