More than 1,000 Orange County residents and students walked off jobs and out of classrooms as part of nationwide protests against President Donald Trump’s policies – namely widespread deportation raids.
The demonstrations, dubbed the Free America Walkout, were held across the country on Tuesday – the one year anniversary of Trump’s inauguration and one day after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a holiday honoring USA’s most renowned civil rights leader.
In Orange County, protests took place in Brea, Laguna Beach, Orange, Ladera Ranch, UC Irvine, Costa Mesa and Laguna Woods, according to the Free America Walkout website run by the Women’s March movement.
Around 120 people protested in Garden Grove Tuesday, including dozens of students at Pacifica High School who walked out of the classroom in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies.
Skye, a student, said students are upset with Trump.
“We are upset that we’re seeing our neighbors get taken without any due process. We feel scared. It’s disrupting our education,” she said. “We are taught to use our voice, so we’re out here today to use it to peacefully demonstrate and hopefully show our community that we’re here and we’re supporting them.”
She added she hoped the protests would encourage people to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.
Another Pacifica High School student said Trump supports facism and hopes today’s protests will encourage people to speak out against the president’s actions.
“He expels people not because of citizenship, even though he claims it to be. He removes them because of the color of their skin,” the student said. “I am hoping that this motivates people to stand up and not be quiet and not be a bystander.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump held a news conference listing off his accomplishments in the first year of his second term – pointing to his immigration policies and the deportations of undocumented immigrants, including violent criminals.
“Remember when they used to say that the people that come into our country as immigrants are very nice people. They’re wonderful people. They don’t commit crime. No, they make our criminals look like babies. They make our Hells Angels look like the sweetest people on Earth,” Trump said.
“We removed tens of thousands of illegal alien gang members, drug dealers, murderers, child predators, human traffickers, fraudsters and savage criminals. Why wouldn’t you want them removed?”
More than 2.6 million undocumented immigrants have been removed from the U.S. through deportations and voluntary self departures in the first year, according to a Tuesday White House news release.
According to detention data from the Department of Homeland Security, a large majority of the 6,280 people detained in California have no criminal convictions – listed as “No ICE Threat” in federal data.
As of Dec. 26, the latest available data, 69% of detainees have no criminal convictions, while 31% do.
Since the deportation raids started throughout OC in June, a host of immigration activists, legal observers, researchers, volunteers and legal representatives have told Voice of OC that abrupt changes to immigration policies are turning people into undocumented immigrants – revoking things like temporary protected status and nixing immigration court proceedings.
[Read: Orange County’s Year on ICE]
Meanwhile, around 200 people showed up to a protest outside Orange City Hall organized by Indivisible Orange at its peak, according to organizers.
Organizers also estimated 150 showing up for a demonstration in Ladera Ranch, 250 in Laguna Beach and over 300 in Brea – at their peak.
Melvin Vernon, who helped facilitate the protest in Orange, said the protest is about stopping what he says is facism coming from the White House.
“It’s sad that we have to do this in America, but it’s where we are right now,” he said.
“We’re dealing with the atrocities of ICE, the kidnapping of people in our community, in Santa Ana – shooting folks in the eye – Renee Good, her death, and at least 30 other people that have lost their lives because of ICE and DHS.”
Tuesday’s walk outs come after Homeland Security officers shot two protesters with less lethal rounds and blinded each in one eye earlier this month at a rally held in Santa Ana to protest the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a mother in Minneapolis who was shot dead by an ICE agent.
“ICE is something that is terrorizing our community and we’re not going to be the next Roosevelt Minneapolis,” said Kaitlyn, another Garden Grove student, pointing to Border Patrol agents clashing with school leaders at Roosevelt High School in Minnesota following Good’s killing.
Leslie Escobedo, a Los Alamitos resident who attended the walkout in Garden Grove, said she came to the protest because she couldn’t stay at home and called Good’s killing depressing.
“The way they’re treating immigrants – it brings tears to my eyes. I’m the granddaughter of immigrants,” she said.
“It’s horrifying that people are getting shot. I don’t think she was a threat.”
Nick Spain, an Orange resident and poet, compared ICE agents to the Gestapo police force of Nazi Germany during World War II – a war his father fought in when serving as a Navy fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater.
“As a kid I used to hear the adults pose a question to one another, why didn’t the Germans do something earlier to keep the Nazi regime and Hitler out of power?” he said.
“Because most people don’t think whatever is going on is going to impact them. It isn’t meant for them. It’s always the other, it’s someone else, and you think that way and by the time it’s you, you don’t have any power left.”
Spain adds that Trump’s actions impact all Americans.
“It’s just a total lack of regard for policy and procedure and respect for the American people and, as you can tell, I’m not going to stand here and take it without speaking up,” he said.
Kathleen Bowman, an Anaheim Hills resident, said she went to the Orange protest after attending a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event the day before because she felt she needed to take a stand.
Bowman said Trump is destroying the country, calling his first year in office a disaster.
“No one is stopping it, and it has to change. If we allow this to go on, we will no longer have a democracy,” she said.
This month is not the first time ICE protesters have been injured in Santa Ana.
Last summer in the wake of the deportation raids, police officers fired rubber bullets, projectiles and tear gas at protesters in downtown Santa Ana, sparking questions on how the city’s police department handles protests.
More than six months later, it’s unclear whether the department has updated or adapted anything in response to those protests
[Read: Santana: Were Santa Ana Police Justified in Firing On Peaceful Protesters?]
The walkouts aren’t the only protests scheduled today.
There was another demonstration in Downtown Santa Ana at 6:30 p.m. to protest the first anniversary of the Trump administration taking office against deportations.
Vangee Oberschlake, another organizer with Indivisible Orange and a Vietnam era veteran, said the organization has been hosting weekly rallies in Orange in support of democracy since May and have been working with other groups to support families in need with mutual aid.
Oberschlake also said she took a vow at 18 to defend the constitution and that after Trump’s inauguration last year she feels she has to honor that oath.
“While I realized my country is not perfect, and those founding documents have major problems, I believe in the power of transformation. I think we Americans can make our country what we want it to be.”
Correction: a previous version of this article identified the organizer for the protest in Orange as Indivisible California 40. Indivisible Orange organized the protest in the City of Orange Tuesday. We regret this error.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.