![\"Hillsborough](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0206_bn9_student_ice_protest_2.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nTAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Students at Hillsborough High School planned a Friday walkout, protesting ICE. This comes after the State\u2019s Education Commissioner, Anastasios Kamoutsas, warned that demonstrations during the school day aren\u2019t allowed.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
About 60 students walked out of the school and gathered around the flag pole to protest ICE
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State Rep. Michael Owen has been vocal about protests not being allowed during school hours
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Students who spoke with Spectrum News say will accept the consequence of their actions
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BELOW: Read memo sent by\u00a0State\u2019s Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas<\/p>\n
About 60 students walked out of the school and gathered around the flag pole at 1:40 p.m. They had their anti-ICE signs ready to go, and once they were all out, they left school, walking just over three miles to Middleton High School, and back.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we are protesting against the brutality of ICE. We have decided as a group of young students the generation is in our hands,\u201d said Dejaverie Brown, a senior at Hillsborough High School.<\/p>\n
Dejaverie led her classmates in the protest, saying, \u201cWe are slowly and surely making a difference in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Kamoutsas sent a memo to all superintendents after anti-ICE protests broke out at schools across the state. In it, he said students retain constitutional rights to free expression when it complies with applicable law and school district policy, and if it doesn\u2019t, students should be disciplined.<\/p>\n
Despite that, Dejaverie says students here didn\u2019t want to just stand by. \u201cWe cannot sit by and let ICE continue to destroy innocent lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
We spoke with State Rep. Michael Owen on the phone Friday morning before the protest at Hillsborough High School. He has been vocal about protests not being allowed during school hours.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hillsborough High School students say they were aware that there could be consequences for their actions, but say it\u2019s a risk they were willing to take. (Spectrum News)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what you\u2019re protesting,” Owen said. “I\u2019m a pro-life person. I would be the same way if kids were going to miss class on a taxpayer’s dime to protest that, so schools don\u2019t need to be about political ideologies protesting and missing class. It needs to be about math, science, English and history,\u201d said Owen.<\/p>\n
Hillsborough High School students say they were aware that there could be consequences for their actions, but say it\u2019s a risk they were willing to take.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they want to suspend me, expel me, for standing up for what\u2019s right, then it was never right for me to go there. We\u2019re going to stand up and we are going to fight,\u201d said Dejaverie.<\/p>\n
We saw school administrators waiting outside the high school when students returned. Some students walked back into the building, but by the time they got back, school was letting out for the day.<\/p>\n
Hillsborough County District Officials say the district does not approve or condone this type of activity. They said they\u2019ll refer to the Student Code of Conduct for any disciplinary action, and it\u2019ll depend on each student\u2019s previous record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Students at Hillsborough High School planned a Friday walkout, protesting ICE. This comes after the State\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4996,3140,113,5711,276,115,99,135,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-146579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-app-education","9":"tag-app-local-state-politics","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-fallon-silcox","12":"tag-hillsborough-county","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-tampa","16":"tag-tampa-headlines","17":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}