Students Walk Out Against ICE, Counselor Seizes Student’s Sign Off Campus
As student walkouts against ICE spread nationwide, tensions are rising between young protesters and school administrators. In Portland, one family says a counselor crossed a constitutional line when she confiscated their daughter’s protest sign off campus.
Last week, students across the country walked out of their classrooms to protest ICE enforcement and the escalating kidnappings and deportation of people nationwide.
For many young people, it was their first time participating in a protest.
In Oregon, recent walkouts followed weeks of sustained demonstrations responding to aggressive federal immigration actions and the killings of Keith Porter Jr., Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Protest actions in schools have been happening nearly weekly.
In Woodburn on February 6, more than 250 Woodburn High School students left class Friday morning to protest both local and national immigration enforcement. As they marched through town, cars honked in solidarity. Students carried signs reading “Fund education, not deportation,” “Freedom or fascism, time to choose,” and “When cruelty becomes normal, compassion becomes radical.” Chants of “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here” echoed through the streets.
Many students spoke openly about walking out for their families.
Woodburn, along with many part of the state, have seen sustained ICE activity for months. From late June through December, ICE detained over 1,000 people across Oregon, according to immigrant rights advocates. In Woodburn alone, dozens of multi-person detentions have occurred since last summer, including a single day in October when roughly 35 people, many farmworkers, were detained.
In a community with a large Latino population, the message from students was clear: they are watching, and they are not staying silent.
But in Portland, one student’s protest drew a different kind of response. This time, it came from a staff member.
According to a parent’s statement sent to the PPS School Board and Superintendent, and shared with press, a Kellogg Middle School student participating in the anti-ICE walkout had her sign confiscated by a school counselor while standing on a public sidewalk, completely off school property.
The student, whose name has been redacted at the family’s request, had left the building and was standing at the corner of SE 69th and Powell during the February 5 walkout protesting ICE.
Her sign read: “FUCK ICE.”
Her parents allege that PPS School Counselor Jeanette Scantling approached the student on the public sidewalk, scolded her, and took the sign.
The family argues that because the student was off school grounds and on public property, the counselor’s actions constituted a violation of her First Amendment rights. (Tinker v. Des Moines)
Schools do have authority to regulate student speech on campus in certain circumstances. But once a student is off school property and participating in a public demonstration, the constitutional protections shift significantly. Courts have repeatedly upheld that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” The boundaries become even narrower for school authority once the student has left that gate entirely.
The parents also allege that the counselor targeted their daughter due to past conflict and opposing political views. The family has been involved in long-term anti-ICE organizing, including a petition campaign to revoke the permit for Portland’s ICE facility.
The family is demanding disciplinary action and formal reporting of the incident.
Below is the full statement sent to PPS leadership, with the student’s name redacted.
Full Statement From Parents
PPS School Board and Superintendent,
I am the parent of Kellogg student [name withheld]. On Thursday, February 5th, [she] participated in the walkout at Kellogg Middle School in protest of ICE. [She] is a Puerto Rican and Irish-American student who attends the Spanish Immersion Program at Kellogg Middle School. [The student] departed from the school building and was down on the corner of 69th and Powell, on the public sidewalk, not on school property.
At that time, PPS School Counselor Jeanette Scantling violated our daughter's First Amendment rights when she came up to our daughter on the public sidewalk, scolded her, and took away her sign, which read, “FUCK ICE.”
I am not afraid to put this fact on the public record because this individual did this to our daughter and must be held accountable. The common mantra of this movement is “Chinga La Migra.” Our daughter holding up this message in translation is her right.
While it is within the purview of the school to make suggestions for student safety, and even to set boundaries regarding language within the school environment, it is unlawful to do so when the student has departed the school and is on the public sidewalk. This counselor violated our child’s First Amendment rights. We want her held accountable.
This counselor also knows that our family is involved in long-term anti-ICE protests. She is aware that we created the petition to close the ICE Detention Center, which now has nearly 19,000 signatures.
There were many other students who carried similar signs, but this counselor targeted our daughter because she does not like us and disagrees with our political views.
We have officially asked the Portland Association of Teachers to stand down and refuse to support this employee who acted outside of their duties and off of school property.
This employee must be disciplined, removed from her position, and her actions must be reported to TSPC.
Please inform us how you will hold her accountable and inform all employees that they must not under any circumstances interfere with a student who is expressing their First Amendment rights, especially while participating in a walkout and off of PPS property.
Thank you and FUCK ICE!
What happened at Kellogg is not an isolated incident. Across the country, students walking out against ICE, deportations, and federal immigration crackdowns are encountering pushback, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt.
Walkouts are, by design, disruptive. That is their point. They are meant to signal that something larger than algebra homework is happening in the world.
For many of the students who walked out last week, this was their first act of political participation. Across the state, hundreds of students marched in solidarity with their immigrant families and neighbors.
The tension here isn’t really about profanity.
It’s about who gets to define the limits of youth political expression and whether schools, consciously or not, become enforcers of political comfort.
If students are told they won’t be punished for walking out, but then find their political speech policed once they do, the message becomes muddy: participate, but not too loudly. Speak up, but not like that.
The First Amendment was built precisely to protect speech that makes people uncomfortable, especially speech directed at government power.
As student walkouts continue across Oregon and nationwide, school districts will face a choice: respect the autonomy of students and all of their rights, or treat their dissent as something to manage and contain.
Students are clearly choosing the first path. The question is whether school administrators will.
The parents are asking for the community to write to the school’s principal, superintendent, and school board "to demand accountability for [their] daughter's rights.”
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