Woodbridge High School in Prince William County, Virginia, handed three-day suspensions to 303 students who walked out of class last Friday in a student-organized protest against ICE. The walkout, which began on campus, quickly spilled off school grounds and onto surrounding streets, with some students heading to a nearby shopping center while others simply went home.

Local police were called in to manage traffic and oversee the students who had left campus. A few students who returned to school reportedly caused a disturbance, though details on what that involved remain unclear.

Principal Dr. Heather Abney sent a letter to parents afterward acknowledging that walkouts allow students to voice their opinions on issues important to them, but made clear that leaving campus without permission during school hours violates district rules. The suspensions followed.

We appreciate your partnership as we continue to prioritize student safety while maintaining clear expectations for appropriate conduct during the school day.

Three hundred and three students. Not a handful of passionate activists. Not a small cluster of seniors looking for an excuse to skip third period. Three hundred students decided, all at once, that the rules governing their school day didn't apply to them.

The Instagram account that lit the fuse

According to the New York Post, the walkout was organized through an Instagram account called "pwcs_iceout," which posted under the banner "Welcome to Prince William County Schools ICE OUT" and urged students across the county to participate. The account didn't limit its ambitions to Woodbridge. It is actively organizing a county-wide walkout planned for Friday, February 20th, spanning multiple Prince William County schools.

The account's instructions were specific and logistically detailed, telling students that because the county-wide walkout would involve different campuses, they should "stay alert for detailed instructions from us and your local student organizers regarding specific meetup spots."

But the most revealing part of the account's messaging was a direct assurance to students that they would face no consequences for participating:

Rest assured that all school administrations have been informed of our plans, so participating will not get you in trouble.

That turned out to be false. The 303 suspensions at Woodbridge proved it. And the Instagram account itself later acknowledged that the protest was not "approved or endorsed" by the district, a statement that directly contradicts the earlier promise that students wouldn't face discipline.

So which is it? Were school administrations on board, or weren't they? The answer matters, because hundreds of teenagers made decisions based on the assurance that walking out carried no risk. Someone lied to them.

Consequences are not oppression

There is a certain pattern in progressive youth activism that has become almost ritualistic. Students are told they are righteous. They are told the cause is urgent enough to override ordinary rules. They are told, implicitly or explicitly, that anyone who enforces those rules is on the wrong side of history. And when the predictable consequences arrive, the enforcement itself becomes the scandal.

Woodbridge High School didn't punish students for having opinions about immigration policy. It suspended them for leaving campus without permission during the school day, an act that created genuine safety concerns serious enough to require police involvement for traffic management. Students wandered into streets and scattered to shopping centers. The school had no idea where hundreds of its students were.

That's not protest. That's a liability nightmare.

The right to free expression does not include the right to walk out of a public school, cross onto public roads, and force local police to babysit you while you do it. Students who want to organize political action have every opportunity to do so before school, after school, and on weekends. The First Amendment is not a hall pass.

Who's really being served here?

It's worth asking what exactly these students were protesting. ICE enforces federal immigration law. Its agents remove people who are in this country illegally. That is not a rogue operation. It is the basic function of a sovereign nation maintaining its borders.

The framing behind "ICE OUT" treats immigration enforcement as inherently illegitimate, as something to be resisted rather than respected. That framing has been mainstreamed so thoroughly in certain circles that teenagers now treat it as self-evident truth, the kind of cause so obviously just that skipping school for it requires no justification.

But notice what the organizers actually delivered. They didn't educate anyone. They didn't change a policy. They didn't file a petition or attend a school board meeting. They got 303 kids suspended and then started planning the next walkout. The cause is the cause. Results are optional.

The county-wide escalation

The planned February 20th walkout across Prince William County schools represents a deliberate escalation. The Instagram account is coordinating across campuses, distributing meetup instructions, and building the kind of decentralized organizing infrastructure that makes it difficult for any single school administration to get ahead of it.

Prince William County Public Schools did not endorse the first walkout, and there's no indication they'll endorse the second. But the organizers have already shown a willingness to tell students they won't face consequences, even when that isn't true. The question now is whether school administrators across the county will hold the same line Woodbridge held, or whether the political pressure of a larger, coordinated action will cause some to blink.

If 303 suspensions at one school didn't deter the organizers, the answer to that question matters more than anything else.

Rules exist for a reason

Dr. Abney struck the right balance in her letter. She acknowledged students' desire to express themselves while enforcing the straightforward rule they broke. That's not heavy-handed. That's the job.

The adults who deserve scrutiny are the ones who aren't in the picture: whoever is behind an Instagram account telling minors to leave school property with the false promise that nothing will happen to them. Whoever decided that using children as foot soldiers for an anti-enforcement political campaign was acceptable activism rather than what it actually is, which is manipulation.

Three hundred and three students learned last week that actions have consequences. The organizers planning the next walkout are betting that the rest of the county won't learn the same lesson.

Prince William County's administrators now get to decide whether that bet pays off.