Eagle Mountain-Saginaw students say admin changed ICE walkout rules, discipline
Chance Howell grew up on a two-house property near his dad’s oil company in Saginaw. One house for him and his family, the other for his father’s best employee, Jose.
The two families grew so close that Jose regularly came over for dinner, and Howell also spent dozens of evenings after school at Jose’s house learning how to speak Spanish. The two houses were separated by just a few yards, but the occupants couldn’t have been any more different. Yet, the two families were still best friends.
“I’m a white boy,” said Howell, a senior at Saginaw High School in Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district. “It’s always impressing people when I say I can speak Spanish. That’s because I grew up with immigrants. Immigrants are part of life here in Texas.”
Howell’s childhood experiences with Jose, coupled by recent events in Minnesota where two died at the hands of federal immigration agents, inspired him to speak up about what he believes is the mistreatment of immigrants by ICE.
Howell is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of students across the Dallas-Fort Worth region in recent weeks who have organized or participated in anti-ICE protests at their schools. Some students have walked out in the middle of their school day, down busy highways and through neighborhoods holding signs and chanting anti-ICE slogans.
Some school leaders, most notably those at Saginaw Boswell High School, are in a firestorm with students regarding punishment and disciplinary action for participating in walkouts that interrupt the school day. Students believe administration helped them walk out just to be disciplined by the district days later. Now, they could lose their senior prom or ability to walk the graduation stage as punishment.
Protests Howell has led at Saginaw High School have been after school hours. He says it’s important to follow the rules and make sure no one gets in trouble. But at other schools in the region students are walking out during school hours, causing friction between protesting students and school leaders the students say helped facilitate walkouts only to stand quiet once punishment is inflicted on the protesters.
Students organized their first walkout during school hours on Feb. 2. They walked out at around 10 a.m. after their first period and went to a nearby Walmart.
Brody Jones, a student leader of the walkouts at Boswell High School, said Eagle Mountain-Saginaw police and school administrators both escorted student protestors through their planned route by blocking roads so students could march safely. But eventually, EMS ISD police and school officials stopped following the protesters, leaving them to find ways to get back to the school on their own, Jones said.
Jones and other students told the Star-Telegram that the school district offered students a ride on a bus back to Boswell High, but some of those buses took protesting students to an alternative school — not Boswell High.
Dozens of students who participated in the Feb. 2 protest at Boswell High said Principal Ryan Wilson originally approved the protest and helped the students by discussing how to ensure student safety and encouraging them to take a stand for issues that matter to them. Video taken of Wilson on the day of the protest provided to the Star-Telegram confirms that account.
“If someone saw what you were doing, and heaven help us, decided to oppose what you are doing and got into some degree of physical altercation with you while you were trying to exercise your right, that’s on me,” Wilson told students over a megaphone moments before they began protesting. “That’s on me as your principal because I did not create a space that was safe for you to exercise your rights and speak to something that is obviously important to you.
“I want to help you in a sense that it’s not just Boswell,” Wilson said over the megaphone. “It’s Chisholm, it’s Saginaw, it’s a collective effort.”
Wilson was hired as the principal of Boswell High School in May after spending 24 years in Carroll school district, including a tenure as widely-respected principal of Carroll Senior High School. Parents and students packed a May 2025 school board meeting in opposition of the district’s decision to not extend Wilson’s contract. A GoFundMe also raised over $9,000 for Wilson and his family after his contract was not renewed by the Carroll school board.
Now, students at Boswell High say they’re confused by punishment and discipline they’ve received by the district for participation in protests, especially after Wilson gave them tips on how to stay safe and didn’t stop them from holding their walkout on Feb. 2.
A spokesperson for Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district did not respond to the Star-Telegram’s repeated requests for an interview or comment about the situation.
Two days after the Feb. 2 protest, parents of students who participated in the walkout received a call from Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district explaining that their child would receive disciplinary action, but exact punishments had not yet been decided, according to a voicemail from the district to a parent obtained by the Star-Telegram.
Boswell students also organized a second anti-ICE protest at 4:25 p.m. Monday at the Effie Center at Boswell High — notably after school hours and not during the school day like the Feb. 2 protest.
The district sent a letter to parents in the days leading up to the second protest detailing that walking out of school during class hours would lead to disciplinary action. Those punishments could include the loss of prom and not being able to walk the stage at graduation.
“When students leave campus without permission, we are unable to ensure their safety once they’re off school grounds,” the district wrote in a statement to parents. “We care deeply about every student, and recent incidents have shown that individuals participating in public demonstrations can sometimes face unexpected risks.”
On Feb. 3, the Texas Education Agency also responded to the hundreds of student-led walkouts and protests across the state by issuing new guidance about how schools should respond to protests that occur during the school day.
TEA said that students must be marked absent if they participate in walkouts and schools also risk losing daily attendance funding if they allow or encourage students to walk out of class. The agency also said that teachers who facilitate walkouts will be subject to investigation and possible sanctions that could include revoking their licenses.
Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school district did not respond to the Star-Telegram’s request to comment on whether the district has been investigated for its handling of the student-led walkout on Feb. 2.
On Feb. 6, the Texas State Board of Education wrote a letter to TEA commissioner Mike Morath expressing “serious concern” about student walkouts across the state. State Board of Education members Brandon Hall, Julie Pickren and Tom Maynard asked Morath to coordinate with the Texas House of Representatives Oversight Committee to examine potential noncompliance with school safety requirements.
“Allowing students to leave campus during the school day without prior notice to parents or the opportunity for parents to opt in or opt out is a clear violation of parental rights and undermines the trust families place in their schools,” the Board of Education members wrote in the letter.
But at Boswell, student leaders like Jones say they have no plans to stop protesting, despite pushback from the district, State Board of Education and Gov. Greg Abbott.
“My entire life I have been taught to love instead of hate,” said Jones, who led the Feb. 2 walkout and helped plan the Feb. 9 protest. “I grew up in Haltom City where most of our population is Hispanic. Some of the best people I have ever met have been from there. We as students must do what it takes to make a difference.”
