300 students stage walkout to protest ICE. ‘Without immigrants, Paso isn’t Paso.’
More than 300 high school students in Paso Robles walked out of school on Friday to protest the actions of federal immigration agents.
Students marched from Paso Robles High School to the Niblick Bridge, carrying Mexican flags, raising signs and cheering and whistling at dozens of passing drivers who honked and waved to support the swarm of teenagers.
The walkout came a week after students at other SLO County schools — including San Luis Obispo High School, Arroyo Grande High School and Cal Poly — left their classrooms on Jan. 30 as part of a nationwide strike against ICE that also shut down participating local businesses for the day.
In Paso, students Jesus Ursulo and Lyric Johnson organized Friday’s protest.
Ursulo said most students at Paso High didn’t know about the plans at other schools to strike the week before, but after seeing that, he and Johnson wanted to give Paso Robles students a way for their voices to be heard.
“We shouldn’t be scared to go to school, we shouldn’t be scared to go out,” Ursulo told The Tribune during the protest. “My parents shouldn’t be scared to go to the store because they saw something on Facebook. It should be a country where everyone is free, and rather than deeming immigrants criminals, we should deem our own president a criminal, because that’s what he is.”
Ursulo added that immigrants and the Latino community have shaped Paso into what it is today.
“Paso is full of Hispanics, and Paso is built on Hispanics,” he said. “Without immigrants, Paso isn’t Paso.”
More than 300 students walk out of class to protest ICE
Ursulo and Johnson were two among a crowd of more than 300 that swarmed out of the campus around 2:30 p.m. Friday.
School district spokesperson Melissa Godsey said the school wouldn’t have an exact estimate of how many walked out until Monday, but Principal Mike Susank confirmed it was at least several hundred students.
The crowd walked for about a mile down Niblick to the sound of honking cars and a radio playing the song “FDT.”
While the crowd stood on the overpass, Ursulo and Johnson led the crowd in a chant of, “Paso taught us to be proud, families should be allowed.”
Students waved signs jeering immigration enforcement and criticizing the Trump administration, while others had signs highlighting immigrant communities. Ursulo also told The Tribune students hosted a sign-making session the day before in anticipation of the walkout.
“Without immigrant hands, the heart of our streets stops beating,” read one sign, marked with a heart, butterflies and a handprint.
Another sign read: “If it was your family, your loved ones and your rights getting taken away from you, you would care.”
Student Lola Tamez was another student at the protest.
“It’s not right that kids don’t feel comfortable to come to school,” Tamez said, when asked why she participated in the walkout. “ ... I feel like it’s outrageous, the fact that so many people feel so in danger.”
She said a protest like Friday’s is important in a community like Paso Robles to support the city’s Latino and immigrant populations.
“Paso has been quiet about it, and I feel like that’s not right,” she said. “I feel like Paso needs to stand up for themselves because we have a lot of people in Paso who are immigrants.”
Johnson echoed many of the same thoughts as her classmate.
“We’re tired of the silence,” she told The Tribune. “We have to step up if no one else will, because we are our future.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2026 at 10:00 AM.
.JPG)