As a result of rising tension regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s ongoing operations in multiple US cities, more than 300 students across Glacier Peak High School walked out of their classrooms and planned to do a massive walk out on Tuesday, Feb. 10. During their 5th period, more than 300 students left their classrooms carrying signs, flags, and microphones, peacefully protesting along the sidewalk of Cathcart Way and 132 place SE, and walked about two miles until stopping near a CVS building half-an-hour later.
One of the protesters, Olivia Kopcak explained the main reasoning into why people are protesting the wrongdoing of ICE and our current state of the world: “I think there is so much awfulness going on in the world right now, and people are just looking away. You just can’t look away,” says Kopcak. “It is looking so much like past history and people aren’t realizing this. It’s honestly just devastating that the country has turned into something like this again.”
Another one of the students protesting, Tristan Roach, became inspired to participate in the walkout after being exposed to the things that ICE has done through media exposure online, “Just the amount of things I”ve seen online about the killings of people, people being taken away from their families. It’s a horrific thing that I would never want to personally experience, and I have family in other states that had to deal with these things and it ultimately inspired me to walk out about it just because of how crazy the things that ICE is doing,” Roach said. “We were all there unified. Nobody was doing anything really crazy, standing out, or making us look like a bad batch. We all did a good job of being respectful and being good students and people.”
Going into the walkout students had no idea just how many people in total were going to participate, “While going into this, because of the area, we kind of expected only about 30 students to participate. We were all throwing jokes around but we all kind of believed it, that we we’re going to have like only 10 students,” Roach said. “But the turnout was amazing, it was so much better than I could have hoped of.”
Stella • Apr 1, 2026 at 8:17 pm
The article is wrong, according to messages sent to parents, the number of students who walked out in the Snohomish area was about 90. Please do not spread misinformation on the internet
Evan Weaver • Apr 2, 2026 at 10:21 am
Hello Stella, according to many students that we talked to, they all roughly estimated around 300 students. I do understand your concern about the spreading of misinformation, however, we trust out sources of the students who were on the scene. This article is referring to the glacier peak high school, you may have been confusing this with the Snohomish high school walkout or any of the other nearby high schools. Thank you for your consideration though.
Deborah Simpson • Feb 14, 2026 at 7:52 pm
You guys are amazing so many people and families have to be up rooted, some of the children were born here and are 15, so wrong