Student Walkouts Continue Tuesday; Officials Vow Crackdown

Kelly-Anne Suarez and J. Michael Kennedy
Times Staff Writers

9:48 PM PST, March 28, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles' two top law enforcement officials vowed a crackdown Tuesday on students who walk out of class as authorities struggled to quell a third day of widespread demonstrations against immigration policy.

More than 12,000 students across Southern California defied Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and school officials by participating in a new round of marches on a rainy Tuesday, including one that blocked freeway traffic and a second in which protesters attempted to clog a major waterfront bridge.

County Sheriff Lee Baca and city Police Chief William J. Bratton said at a joint news conference that their agencies would begin aggressively enforcing truancy laws. Deputies and officers will now issue citations to any students found out of school, requiring them to appear in court. The citations could result in fines of up to $200 and 20 days of community service.

Bratton said about 100 students were cited for truancy in the shoreline community of San Pedro on Tuesday. He noted that about 500 walked onto the Harbor Freeway as part of their protest.

"That's not free speech, that's insanity," he said.

Youths waving Mexican flags and wearing white T-shirts took to the streets for the second day running, though not in the large numbers that turned out Monday.

And as a measure of the importance of the issue in immigrant population centers, the marches spread to other cities in California, as well as those in Texas and Nevada.

Villaraigosa said that more than 11,600 students from throughout the county were involved in the Tuesday protests -- compared to more than 30,000 on Monday.

The mayor said that law enforcement officials have been "restrained" in dealing with protesting students, but that beginning Wednesday the city would be "very strongly applying our truancy laws."

Referring to students who had walked on freeways in an attempt to disrupt traffic, Villaraigosa called such actions "an unsafe situation that we can't tolerate."

Long Beach schools Superintendent Chris Steinhauser posted a letter to parents on his district's Web site, warning that students would face increasingly severe consequences if protests continue. About 1,000 Long Beach middle and high school students stayed out of school in protest for a second day Tuesday.

In Orange County, Santa Ana schools superintendent Al Mijares said he is also urging parents to help by telling their children to stop the protests.

In various parts of Los Angeles, the day was marked by scuffles, lockdowns and truancy citations.

LAUSD spokeswoman Stephanie Brady said roughly 8,500 students walked out of schools in protest, a sharp drop from the 27,000 who marched on Monday. The district could lose $28.60 in state education funding for each of them, a total of just over $1 million for the two days.

Brady said, however, the district is entitled to appeal to the state Department of Education, arguing that the protests were "circumstances beyond our control."

Also, Brady denied that any students were bused from their schools to the demonstrations. "Absolutely not," she said. "We are not busing from schools to City Hall. We're taking them from City Hall back to their schools."

At issue is a bill now being debated in the U.S. Senate that makes it a federal offense to enter the United States illegally. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives last December.

Adrian Mora, an Avalon High School junior who participated in a march to nearby Carson High, disputed the notion that students were just looking for a reason to cut class, defending them as understanding the issues if not the details of the legislation.

"Put yourself in our position. So many things here are picked by us, made by us, prepared by us. Do they really not want us here?" he asked, rhetorically. "They may look at us (students) and think we're dumb, but we're just here to help the people we love."

Walkouts also were reported in San Diego, Orange Riverside, and Fresno counties, as well as in Texas and Nevada.