About 15 years from now, some 30-something dad will get a question from his son about that tattoo he has on his calf that has a big black blotch and then the word “ICE.” Having done his best to cover up the eff-bomb on his leg right after his son was born, he dreaded the day his young boy would ask him about it.
“Dad, why do you have that black mark and then ‘ICE’ on your leg?”
Dad’s rehearsed this in his mind for a while, so he says, “You see, little buddy, daddy did some dumb things when he was younger. And so anyway, I liked this girl, and she liked dudes who were into social justice, and, well…”
“Dad… what’s social justice?”
“Don’t worry, son, it was stupid.”
The lesson that dad won’t be able to talk about until his boy is a little older is that sometimes high school and college kids make a lot of thoughtless mistakes. Often as not, the dumbest things they do are carried out in an act of trying to be more grown-up than they actually are.
Other times, fads lead young people to do ill-advised things that can change their life-trajectory in quick order. Eating Tide Pods, doing drugs, having sex, reading Rules for Radicals, those sorts of things.
If you want to know why many high school and college students are engaging in these anti-ICE walkouts, that’s what it comes down to. Years from now, this generation of Zoomers will explain it all away with the words, “It was just a thing we did.” The key messaging programmed into them by NGOs and the legacy media will have long faded from their minds. Those protest chants will be foggy memories.
But for now, the biggest and most important thing on their plate is the now ubiquitous “F*** ICE” walkout, where the majority of students simply stand up and walk out of the school building, and then they go out into the streets with signs, marching and chanting. Or they stand at intersections heckling cars that are driving by, because this is how you change the world, you see.
And as things often go with hormonal, erratic teenagers, set free to roam the streets during the school day, they can’t even predict what they might do next, but somehow, bricks and filled water bottles end up being tossed at cars. Drivers get out. Students capture it all on video, and a new viral narrative is unleashed – something like, “MAGA driver harasses high school students peacefully protesting.”
My guess is that Daniel Weber, who is a high school principal in Reading, Pa., has seen this movie before in different contexts. He knows how it’s likely to end.
And so, when a group of students from his high school recently decided to follow the fad and walk out of school to protest ICE, Weber did something spineless or communist principals at other schools across the country have refused to do – he stopped them.
According to WFMZ-TV in Pennsylvania, on Feb. 19, the group of 60 students from Wilson High School, which has a student population of 2,100, decided to leave the school building without permission so that they could organize a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Prior to that, the school district had been in negotiations with the students, but no agreement had been reached, and the students did not have authorization to stage a protest.
School officials from the district told WFMZ that the students just decided they would stage a walkout with or without the district’s permission. So the group left the building, some carrying Mexican flags and signs, only to be met out there by Weber, their principal.
He told them in no uncertain terms that freedom of speech is one thing, but no student has the right to ignore school safety protocols or skip class.
“If you go back to class,” he told the group, “then we’re good. If you stay out here, we will get your names, and you will be suspended. Okay?”
Weber added, “That is your option at this point, because you are operating outside the bounds of what was granted. That event was canceled. You left school without permission. Your rights do not supersede the school. So, if you understand that, that is your option.”
He told the group that they could return to the building without incident and no disciplinary action, but for those who insisted on continuing with a protest, school suspension was the consequence.
BASED Pennsylvania principal Daniel Weber just became a NATIONAL HERO!
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 19, 2026
He STORMED outside during an anti-ICE walkout and laid down the law: “You protest on school time, you’re SUSPENDED!”pic.twitter.com/WU9T9dPkvY
To many who aren’t familiar or who may forget, school suspensions can come with serious consequences. College admissions people notice things like school suspensions on high school seniors’ transcripts. Getting suspended from school for any reason can limit the types of colleges that will accept a high school senior, and it could have an impact on scholarship money.
The Wilson School District later issued a statement that reads a lot like a lawyer or two had a hand in its development, which said:
The walkout occurred after the District was informed that a student-led demonstration was not planned, which limited our ability to plan for student supervision and safety…
When students left their classrooms and the school building without authorization, staff accompanied them simply to ensure student safety and order. Students were not, and are not, disciplined for expressing their viewpoints. Any consequences associated with this situation are based solely on violations of established school procedures, including leaving class or the building without permission and failing to follow staff directions.
And thus, the great 2026 standoff of Wilson High School was resolved, and now these kids have something to tell their own kids someday — most likely when they're saying to their young'uns, “Don’t make the same mistakes I did when I was your age.”
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