About 100 Jersey City Public Schools (JCPS) students walked out of four high schools and marched to City Hall on Friday afternoon, in protest of federal immigration policy and escalating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Jersey City.
About 65 of the participants were William L. Dickinson High School students. Roughly 15 students from James J. Ferris High School and 20 students from Henry Snyder High School and Innovation High School also walked out. A handful of students from County Prep High School, which was not in session Friday, also joined their JCPS peers.
JCPS Superintendent Norma Fernandez did not respond to a request for comment on the walkout, which was not district- or school-sanctioned.
Blake, a Ferris High School student who declined to share his last name, said he joined the walkout in solidarity with his friends from immigrant backgrounds. He thinks many of his classmates who would otherwise have participated in the protest did not join because they were afraid ICE would target it, he said. Blake said he has noticed parallels between ICE’s nationwide crackdown and historic human rights abuses.
“I believe that history repeats itself, time and time again,” Blake said. “Not just in this country, but in any country. You look at the Holocaust, you look at the persecution of the Russian natives, you look at the persecution of the Middle Eastern natives … Demonization first step. Second step, removal. And then after that it just gets tighter and tighter until we have a second Holocaust.”
The students who participated in Friday’s walkout were accompanied by volunteer protest marshals from Spirit of Liberation Jersey City, who helped keep students on sidewalks and out of the street throughout their demonstration. They were also joined by some local activists, former Jersey City Board of Education president and mayoral candidate Mussab Ali, and Jersey City Councilmembers Jake Ephros, Eleana Little, Joel Brooks and Tom Zuppa.
After the Snyder and Innovation students, who took the light rail from West Bergen, met up with the Ferris students outside the main exit of Ferris High School, the group walked north on Brunswick Street. As motorists honked their horns and shouted in support of the students, a few participants led chants of “ICE out” and “no justice, no peace, no ICE on our streets.”
The group converged with the students and adults who marched down Newark Avenue from Dickinson, then proceeded to City Hall. Jersey City Police officers accompanied the procession both on foot and in vehicles. At City Hall, nine students from the four participating high schools made speeches denouncing ICE’s recent actions in Jersey City and across the U.S.
“[Jersey City] is filled with immigrant families, multilingual neighborhoods, small businesses built from nothing, and communities that have survived struggle after struggle,” said Dickinson student Isaac Moyet. “Walk through its neighborhoods and you hear Spanish, Arabic, Tagalog, Hindi, Portuguese and so many other languages. That diversity is not a weakness. It is our strength.
“So, when ICE carries out raids, detentions and deportations in communities like ours, it doesn’t just enforce policy. It tears apart families. It leaves children wondering if their parents will come home. It creates fear in places that are supposed to feel safe. Immigrants are human, and humans should not be mistreated in these detention centers … It’s all inhumane, and it violates the basic principles of dignity and human rights this country claims to stand for.”
Ali, Ephros, Brooks, Little and Zuppa also spoke from the steps of City Hall. The local politicians expressed pride in the student protesters’ civic engagement and called for the abolition of ICE — which, as Ali noted in his speech, has only existed since 2003.
“I love that multiple high schools throughout Jersey City organized, coordinated and came together to show that the only thing more powerful than hate is love, as Bad Bunny said,” Little said. “We are committed, my council colleagues and myself and the administration … to working to keep our community safe here in Jersey City.
“ICE has been operating a regime of fear and cruelty. They’ve been throwing out due process. They have been executing people exercising their First Amendment rights. They have become completely lawless and completely unaccountable. That has to change.”
Friday’s protest, during which the participants remained orderly and peaceful, was conceived of and organized by a small group of Dickinson and Ferris students, all of them American-born children of immigrants. One day before the walkout, some Snyder students contacted them asking if they could participate as well, they said.
However, not everyone believed the walkout was student-led. Dickinson High School Principal Gekson Casillas said he thought the protest was actually organized by a local politician, and he did not want his students to be used as pawns in a political campaign. He did not say to whom he was referring.
Ali is currently running in the 2026 Democratic primary for the 8th Congressional District against U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez.
The student organizers, who asked that their names be withheld because they fear ICE could target their parents, said the walkout was entirely student-led. The organizers initially contacted Ali to seek his support, not the other way around, they said.
“Mussab Ali was a good help by assisting us as a trusted adult, but this was all organized by students,” said one of the organizers, a Ferris student. “Our team of Ferris and Dickinson students worked so hard to make this happen.”
She added: “Do people really think that we are vulnerable and don’t know what’s really going on around the world just because we are young? That is extremely condescending, and they do not realize that young voices can create a large impact on the world.”
E. Assata Wright contributed reporting for this article.