In the wake of a new year sullied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Howard University freshman Zahir Kalam Id-Din found inspiration in youth protests, igniting his own interest in encouraging a call for collective action.
A week ahead of a nationwide anti-ICE shutdown, 20-year-old Kalam Id-Din was on a FaceTime call with his brother discussing the latest news of recent ICE arrests and violence that not only sparked high school walkouts in cities across the country, but would catapult his vision for a movement in D.C.
“If high school students can do this, I definitely can rally college students,” he told The Informer, recalling the thought process that led to the Jan. 30 organization. “College students, we’re the future — we are the next in line as students. It’s our duty to ensure that our voices hold power accountable through collective and peaceful action, through a student-body movement.”
Kalam Id-Din’s vision came to life last Friday, as several hundred Howard students — alongside those from the University of Maryland College Park and other local campuses — marched through Franklin Park to the White House, in protest of intensified ICE-led violence and operations in Minneapolis, including the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January.
The below-freezing temperatures and snow-covered streets were no match for the protesters, who left their virtual classes and filled the streets chanting “Move ICE, get out the way” and “This is what community looks like.”
The walkout took place during a nationwide anti-ICE shutdown sparked by the murders of Good on Jan. 7 and Pretti a little moretwo weeks later on Jan. 24. While both fatal moments were captured on video — erupting in a national call to remove federal ICE agents from communities — The Guardian reports that, this year alone, a total of eight people have died both in ICE custody and raids.
Mahoro Amani, a co-lead organizer for the Jan. 30 march, said the collaboration between ICE and law enforcement throughout the country is absurd, encouraging people to resist.
“It’s the brutality that we’re seeing, the violence we’re seeing, the callousness we’re seeing, and the lack of training that we’re seeing in these new ICE agents,” Amani said. “You can tell that these people have not been trained because there’s no reason any officer of the law should be panicked enough to shoot people in the streets when you’re doing a deportation or an arrest.”
Coupled with the support of Howard students such as Amani and Kalia Bain, among others, Kalam Id-Din told The Informer the student walkout was not about one particular organization, it was a call to action “for students, by students.”
“We do not want the system of terror to stand,” he said.
As D.C. residents planned a protest for the same day, Kalam Id-Din noted the importance of students leading their own movement.
“We are standing with those who have passed before us, who have fallen by the hands of ICE,” he continued. “We are standing with the Black and brown people in the immigrant communities who are faced with fear.”
Dressed in all black, the student-led protest scaled the streets of D.C., walking from Georgia Avenue to Franklin Square and to the White House, with the support of blockades from the Metropolitan Police Department. People on the sidewalk stopped to film videos, residents in their homes opened their windows to take in the action, and drivers honked their horns as they passed students, championing their cause.
Throughout the frigid walk, students chanted, waved signs and offered bystanders a call to action.
“As students, we have a privilege in academia to be in constant relationships with knowledge, with learning,” said Bain, a sophomore English major and Africana studies minor. “This is the best place to start. We are just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to adulthood, so we have that fire and passion.”
‘Elders for Wisdom, Youth for War’
While the student-led protest charged college students to stand up against ICE, the protest emphasized the importance of collective activity, particularly seeking support from the elders before them.
Take 48-year-old Doshon Farad, a representative of the D.C.-based Black Panther Movement, who joined the Jan. 30 protest as one of the speakers before the march.
“It’s important as Black people to follow the words of [Trinidadian American activist] Kwame Ture,” Farad said. “Either join an organization or start an organization – organize, organize, organize.”
The student organizers reached out to the local Black Panther Movement to request speakers, security, as well as participants who could serve as advisers and legal observers to showcase the importance of intergenerational collaboration and taking counsel from those who have done it before.
Reflecting on a time of his introduction into civil rights activism, Farad recalls when his elders expressed the importance of picking up the baton, which instilled the mission he carried throughout his service in the Civil Rights Movement and global Pan-African movement.
More than that, when the time came for him to dawn the elders’ wisdom, he saw a need to fulfill.
“There’s something that I believe the Bible would always say: ‘elders for wisdom, youth for war,’” he told The Informer. “At some point, you’re gonna have to sit back and allow the young people to shine. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but you have to give young people their own space, give them time to make their own mistakes and to revive.”
Amani shared her own sentiment behind preserving an intergenerational fight.
For her, without the combined experiences of older generations and young adults on the front line, it wouldn’t be enough to effect proper, lasting change.
“We need the movement to continue once they’re gone, and we need us to be taught by them,” she explained. “We need to learn from their wisdom and everything they have to offer us.”
Donning a red coat fashioned with “ICE has absolute immunity” and a self-made flag that read: “Alex Pretti, murdered by ICE January 24, 2026” spray-painted on it, Nadine Seiler attended the demonstration as a proud supporter of the young people canvassing all the way to White House.
As a Black immigrant from Trinidad, she told The Informer she foreshadowed the fate of both vulnerable populations when she read Project 2025, the federal policy agenda, published by The Heritage Foundation that outlined a restructuring of the executive branch with challenges to topics such as immigration, abortion, civil rights, focusing on leaning conservative.
“I am being selfish to be honest because I am an immigrant and I knew when I read the synopsis of Project 2025, I knew that they were gonna come for the black community and I knew they were gonna come from the immigrant community,” Seiler said. “I happen to be a part of those two communities.”
Additionally, she touted a personal responsibility to be an example for others overall.
“So other people who are like me can see me and say, ‘OK, she got out, she’s not afraid … I can come out too,’” Seiler said.
Beyond the roots of student-led activism in historic movements, senior chemical engineering major Kelby Hughes highlights his purpose in the foundation of cultural institutions and organizations, especially as a member of Iota Phi Theta Fraternity Inc., one of the historically Black fraternities and sororities, also known as the Divine Nine.
After his friends told him about the nationwide activation, the California native knew this was an important event for him to be a part of, calling out those who have been silent and vowing to use his platform to reject complicity.
“I don’t care about anything going on with the diaspora wars and its classism and its colorism, anything like that. We’re all Black, and that’s what the ICE agents see,” Hughes said. “That’s what the police officers see, and that’s what the administration sees. If we don’t unite now, we’ll be torn asunder.”