Anti-ICE walk brings march culture back to campus
SANTA MONICA, CA. – When President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, he vowed to increase the number of deportations of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Later that month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out hundreds of raids. It resulted in hundreds of undocumented immigrants getting detained and deported.
On Tuesday, March 18, the Adelante Club at Santa Monica College (SMC) hosted an Anti-ICE Solidarity March on the main campus quad.
According to Paola Vasquez, Adelante Club treasurer, the idea to hold an anti-ICE march first came from a board member, one of 10 student-held leadership positions in Adelante.
“From there, it just blossomed,” said Vasquez. “We have such a great board that we were able to, with the help of leading board members, create this march, to show that, as the Adelante Club, we will not stay silent while our Latinx community is being hurt by the rhetoric (around) undocumented immigrants. Especially since a lot of undocumented immigrants aren’t Latinos.”
An estimated 100 people gathered in front of the fountain by the Humanities and Social Science (HSS) building at around 11 a.m. Then, led by the Adelante Club's cabinet members, the crowd moved in front of the library.
It was a sea of white, as the club had encouraged supporters to wear the color in solidarity, a symbol often repeated across protest history. The crowd was full of people from all backgrounds, including people from the Black Collegians program and the Indigenous Scholars Club.
Sequoyah Thiessen, Indigenous Scholars Club president, encouraged her club’s members to join the demonstration and show support.
“We feel very connected to immigrants that come here out of struggle because they’ve been basically displaced from their homes,” said Thiessen. “When you really think about that, that’s kind of like a similar situation to what we went through. And when you’re displaced, you are already so vulnerable, and it just shows our lack of empathy as a society that we would dehumanize the people who are most vulnerable.”
Thiessen said, “As an Indigenous person, for this land to be stolen by white people and then they try to deem who’s a criminal and who’s not, that’s crazy.”
Several speakers addressed the crowd at a podium with a microphone. The first speaker was Adelante Club president Nahomy Rivas.
“The purpose of this march is not just a Latino issue. This country was built on stolen land, unpaid, inhumane, unjust labor, and off the backs of immigrants searching for a better life,” said Rivas in her speech. “So today, we march in solidarity for those who cannot advocate for their rights to be in the very country which they have built to make great.”
Gladys Preciado, a full-time art history professor at SMC, spoke after Rivas.
“As a faculty member, as an educator, and as someone deeply committed to justice and equity, I cannot stay silent in the face of injustice. I cannot stand by while members of our communities live in fear, while families continue to be torn apart by ICE, and while policies funded and supported by the current administration continue to target and unjustly criminalize people,” said Preciado. “We say no to ICE. We say no to these unjust deportations, and we say yes to the dignity, the safety, and the humanity of our Undocu+ students and families, both on campus and beyond campus.”
After Preciado, SMC sociology professor Rebecca Romo took the mic to make some points about immigrants.
“Immigrants make living here in this global city better by sharing their cultural diversity in the form of food and music and other ways of life,” said Romo. “Immigrants are more than just their economic contributions. But it is a fact that their hardship and sacrifice make living here more affordable, and produce would be a lot more expensive without immigrants, like my dad, who worked in the fields in Sacramento picking tomatoes and onions when he was a youth.”
Jessica Rodriguez, an ethnic studies professor at SMC, went on after Romo.
“My grandparents came to this country with nothing and left this Earth with very little, but I am their legacy,” said Rodriguez. “I am, and you are, proof that they tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds, so let’s keep growing.”
Marisol Moreno, head of the DREAM Resource Center and a faculty member in the history department, delivered her speech following Rodriguez. She teaches Chicano and Latino history and has been an advisor and ally to undocumented students for 30 years.
“I’m a very proud daughter of immigrant parents,” said Moreno. “I am here because of the work of my parents, of their freedom dreams, that they work hard to make possible.”
After a quick speech, she and Rodriguez read a poem by Yosimar Reyes titled “UndocuJoy.” The poem celebrates undocumented immigrants' joy, resilience and beauty despite their struggles and hardships. Reyes will be visiting SMC on April 3.
After the speeches concluded, the march began.
With accompaniment from Santa Monica College Police Department (SMCPD) officers, the marchers proceeded on their first route. They departed from the quad, walking down the path between the library and the Math and Science Building to reach the sidewalk on Pearl Street.
Marchers recited several overlapping chants and held up posters with anti-ICE messages. Multiple cars that passed by on the street honked in solidarity, and each time, the crowd cheered in response. Adelante Club cabinet members were spread amongst the crowd, each chanting something different with a megaphone, and that section responded with the corresponding call.
Though the event was political, Rivas intended to curate a welcoming, “very hippie-like” environment. To summon students without heavy political interests, she called the walk a march instead of a protest. To engage busy students without the time to march, the club spent the previous week offering poster-making spaces, available to all.
“I like to be connected to everyone,” said Rivas.
SMCPD maintained their spread-out presence, with one officer at the front and another at the back, accompanied by a police cruiser.
SMCPD chief Johnnie Adams told the Corsair the club had met with police officers early in the march’s development, to arrange for safety and minor traffic control procedures.
“I was very proud of our students exercising their rights under the First Amendment,” said Adams.
Other SMC faculty members kept up the rear of the protest, professing intentions to provide the students with security. Academic administrator Jose Hernandez wanted to defend students’ safety and constitutional rights.
“I think the challenging part that I have with the current administration is that they’re trying to shut people down,” said Hernandez. “I think it’s students who live up to the Constitution and follow the first amendment rights.”
Members of the Student Life Office, including A.S. Board of Directors members and associate dean Thomas Bui, were seen at the protest.
The marchers looped around campus on the 17th Street and Pico Street sidewalks before returning to the quad through the street entrance by the Student Services Center. The marchers took a break, and Adelante Club members and staff handed out water. They repeated the same march cycle several times, making circles around the campus.
The Anti-ICE Solidarity March marked the first large-scale political demonstration at SMC in months. Hernandez sees this as an upward development.
“I’m hoping we see more… to be involved in civil engagement I think is very important,” he said.
Thiessen was involved in the SMC Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) demonstration after Trump’s election. Considering future campus protests, Thiessen is thinking big.
“We can have a reputation for being a college, like, that really cares about its students and rallies a good community of each other. That’s the goal,” she said.
Abby Flores, digital media director for the Adelante Club, credited the march’s ferocity with the cross-club intersectionality, facilitated by Adelante’s outreach team.
“We had a lot of motivation, we had a lot of engagement, a huge crowd,” said Flores. “We greatly appreciate the help and support from all the different clubs that participated, as it helped bring a bigger crowd.”
“We’ve always been very good, very into, like having all the communities come together,” said Rivas. “We like to say we’re one big family in Spanish, somos una gran familia.”
After the final loop, the club planned to finish the demonstration in the quad with closing remarks by speakers. However, counter-protesters from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RevCom) suddenly arrived and started yelling through megaphones and waving posters.
In response, Rivas and Adelante Club vice president Esthela Moncada called for the march’s early dispersal. Turning their backs to RevCom, they used megaphones to amplify, “Please disperse, we don’t want to give them an audience,” and “They are not part of Adelante Club, please walk away.”
Michelle Xai, leader of the RevCom Corps L.A. Chapter, said the purpose of the counter-protest was to bring attention to the ongoing strife in Gaza. Xai said the Adelante Club had previously stated that speech topics unrelated to immigration were forbidden, but RevCom intended to bring “the whole message.”
Xai alleged the club threatened to report RevCom to campus police, which she called “collaborating with the fascist America.”
Rivas contested this. “We’re not in compliance (with fascism). We had a point to be made and we didn’t want a different point A, point B, point C,” she said.
Rivas, a psychology major, has worked on campus for years and participated in on-campus protests with SJP. Having experience with RevCom, she described their intentions as contrarian, even hostile.
“I know they’re not to spread unity, they have their own agenda… this sense of, like, trying to get a gotcha moment from people instead of informing,” said Rivas. “I knew they were just going to try to instigate our students and cause a commotion.”
“People deem movements like ‘Abolish ICE’ or all these other movements as hostile,” said Rivas, hoping to correct the narrative by refusing to tolerate RevCom. “The reason why we held this protest today was because of people like them.”
Adams also commented on the RevCom presence, noting the party’s first amendment rights and the club’s same right to express their distaste.
“This is where people have a choice on whether to listen to what they have to say (RevCom) or move on,” said Adams. “In this instance our students stressed the purpose of the march was one of unity and that they would conduct themselves peacefully.”
“As you can see our students did not want to engage in this instance and conducted themselves admirably in keeping with what they set out to do,” said Adams.
Though officially dispersed, some marchers stuck around to mingle and pick up Know Your Rights materials and red cards from the club’s Info Booth, considered by Rivas to be the march’s prime aspect.
“Honestly, I’m very sentimental… Today was peace, unity and information,” said Rivas, reflecting on her accomplishment.
Rivas seeks to maintain the same momentous spirit for the rest of the semester with Adelante, the club known for fun, frequent activities and an easy source of friendship.
“It’s honestly just a safe space,” said Rivas. “I think we’re going to just have a semester of, like, happiness during turmoil.”