Clovis Unified students stage anti-ICE walkout. ‘We waited too long to get involved’
Approximately 200 students from multiple Clovis Unified schools walked out of their campuses on Tuesday to protest ICE enforcement and President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Tuesday morning, students from Clovis High, Clovis East High and Clark Intermediate School walked out of their campuses at around 8:45 a.m. and marched to the intersection of Clovis Avenue and Shaw Avenue. They held signs such as “ICE is for soda, not for Minnesota,” “Liberty and justice for all,” and “Education not deportation.”
For more than three hours, students chanted, “What we want? ICE out,” and waved their banners to the passing vehicles. Many drivers, especially those in large trucks, honked or gave thumbs-up from their windows in support of the students.
“They’re taking people away and saying that they’re illegal just because of their skin color,” said Annabelle Harry, an eighth grader from Clark Intermediate. “Just because they don’t have the same skin color as you, just because they look different, it doesn’t mean that you have to take them away from us. We love everyone equally.”
Tuesday’s walkout marks the first large-scale student protest in the Clovis Unified School District in recent years. A school district known for its rigorous standards, Clovis Unified has seen little student activism compared to neighboring districts.
Sophia Nash, a senior at Clovis High, said she and some friends organized the protest because they were really upset with the deportation crackdown.
“I think for a lot of us, this felt like a breaking point. One of my teachers was mentioning how a lot of people aren’t willing to protest or speak up until it’s their families, it’s their friends,” Nash said. “I think at our school, we waited too long to get involved, but we didn’t want to wait anymore. We didn’t want people to start getting deported or shot in our city.”
Nash said her group made some signs over the weekend and disseminated the message through social media. She noticed that students from other Clovis Unified schools, such as Clovis West High School and Buchanan High School, also expressed their interest in organizing marches.
“This is definitely a conservative part of California. We did not expect to have as much support for this,” Nash said.
Tuesday’s walkout is also the latest demonstration in a series of student walkouts Central Valley public schools. Since the Jan. 30 national strike protesting the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, hundreds of students in Fresno and surrounding areas have taken to the streets each day to protest.
Over the weekend, a group of 10 superintendents, including Clovis Unified Superintendent Corrine Folmer, issued an open letter to urge students to end walkouts, citing safety concerns when students leave campus to protest during school hours.
Nash said teachers and administrators at her school site were generally supportive of students expressing themselves.
“They didn’t want us to walk out during the school day, because, of course, that’s a safety concern,” Nash said. “None of us blame them at all for that, but they have been incredibly supportive in trying to let us do this in a safe way and peaceful way, we get the message.”
Clovis Unified students have access to a free speech area on campus. During the school day, the district hopes students will express their opinions in the environment during a break or lunch period, which allows for students’ safety and avoids the loss of important instructional time, the district officials said in a statement last week.
The district was aware of the posts calling for protests on social media and reported the unauthorized use of the district’s copyrighted school logos on Instagram, said Kelly Avants, the district’s spokesperson.
A state law, Senate Bill 955, allows middle and high school students one excused absence per year for political protest, as long as the school receives advance notice from the students’ parent or guardian, Avants said. If a minor student leaves campus without following the normal parent check-out procedure, the district’s truancy policies would apply.
Some of the students at the protest said they submitted the notices, others said they are willing to take an “unexcused absence” because they felt it was important to participate in the protest.
“They never specifically said any sort of repercussions would come to us,” said Isaac Erwin, a senior student at Clovis High. “I mean, who cares? This is something that obviously a lot of people care about. They’re not going to be able to punish all of us. I think it’s worthwhile, even if I get a detention.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2026 at 4:31 PM.
