Hundreds of students at Memphis Business Academy marched outside their Frayser high school on Friday, chanting the name of a classmate who’d been detained by ICE a week earlier.
The classmate, Yasser, was a passenger in a car with three other students driving to their season-opening soccer game when they were pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, a student said. Eventually, the other students were released, but Yasser was detained by ICE.
Yasser, who was born in Nicaragua and just turned 18 in November, is being held at the West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason, about 40 minutes outside of Memphis, according to online records. The facility reopened last fall to hold people detained by ICE.
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The 11th grader moved to Memphis with his mother in 2022, where he quickly made friends at Memphis Business Academy, students said.
Merari, 16, another 11th grade student, said Yasser is a “great student,” “genuine,” and one of the best players on the school’s soccer team. MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is identifying her and several others only by their first names to protect their privacy.
“He’s a teenager, and he’s a little afraid of what can happen to him, because we don’t know,” Merari said. “We’re fighting to stand up, and I promise you, we will try to do our best in our hands to try to bring him back.”
The students, from grades 8 to 12, walked out of their classrooms at around 11 a.m. on Friday. A staff member estimated that 600-700 students participated.
In front of the school, Aracely, Yasser’s mother, watched the flood of students. Some stopped to give her hugs. One student carried a cardboard #2 pencil box that had been taped up and decorated, with a slit in the top to collect money for Yasser’s legal fees.
Seeing so many students supporting her son made her happy “in spite of the great sadness,” Aracely told MLK50 in Spanish. “He has a lot of support, and God has not abandoned him,” she said. “I feel happy. At the same time, in the joy, I feel sad because I don’t have him.”
Aracely said she’d been at home making tamales to sell when Yasser was taken. She had begun to worry about her son when one of his friends called with the news of his arrest.
“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and I just broke down crying from the shock,” Aracely said. “I know how things are here.”
The Memphis Safe Task Force has detained more than 700 undocumented immigrants in its first three months, according to arrest reports. That number has likely risen in the first two months of 2026.
“That was a very hard blow, where my heart broke in two,” Aracely said.
Aracely has older children, but Yasser was the only one living at home with her, she said. After his friends brought his two backpacks home, she left to stay with a friend. She said she couldn’t look at his empty room and the backpacks — one full of school supplies and one full of soccer equipment.
“His dreams were left in those two backpacks that they brought me,” she said.
Yasser is a student with big dreams, Aracely and his friends said. He wants to excel at soccer and one day build a house for himself and his mother.
He is an artist who drew the framed Spider-Man picture that hangs above his bed, and the Real Madrid banner draped above his door, Aracely said.
“He was a boy who was just beginning life. He’s not a boy who has done anything bad. And so this is an injustice, because he is not a criminal,” Aracely said. “Rather, this is a trauma for him, because the first thing he’s going to say is, ‘I’m a well‑behaved kid. I’m studying, and now I’m in a jail without having done anything.’”
Not long before he was detained, Yasser and Merari attended the 2026 United States Hispanic Leadership Institute in Chicago. The things she heard there influenced her and others to organize the march in honor of Yasser, Merari said.
“We’re here standing today because someone who we care about matters,” Merari said. “Our friend was on his way to his game, just being a normal human or a normal student, when everything changed. He’s not a criminal. He’s a teammate, a classmate and a part of our community. No one deserves to be treated unfairly or without dignity. Immigrants are human beings with dreams, families and goals, just like anyone else.”
The march on Friday didn’t go entirely as planned. Earlier, school staff told the media that the students would walk around the perimeter of the school’s parking lot. But as they marched, a group of about 30 students broke away from the rest, walking past the front gate and down Overton Crossing to the intersection with Frayser Boulevard. There, they stood and chanted, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here” as cars driving past honked in support. Students chanted Yasser’s name and cheered as Merari said on a megaphone, “ICE, we want you out,” and “I will fight for Latino rights, every single day of my life.”
Later, the group waved over the rest of the students, despite calls from staff to remain on school property. Staff and volunteers from the community worked to keep the students toward the sidewalk and to redirect oncoming traffic.
The students ended up crossing Frayser Boulevard, then walking past a gas station and toward Memphis STEM Academy, which is part of the Memphis Business Academy network of schools, accompanied by teachers and others. They returned to campus about 40 minutes after the march began.
Merari said she appreciated the school for letting the students march, and that going off campus, against the school’s guidance, was a part of “fighting for someone who’s locked up.”
Ruby, 16, said she walked out of school for her parents, who are immigrants, her family and for Yasser, whom she’s known for about three years.
“Even if it wasn’t us, even if it wasn’t our family, we still feel it in our heart that it was someone who got taken, someone close to us,” Ruby said.
Other high schools in the area have also held walkouts to protest ICE, including Memphis Rise Academy on Friday and Overton High School on Tuesday.
Now, Aracely said, she is praying that God will be with her son in detention.
“I feel very heartbroken, because I say, how could they snatch away (his) dream?” she asked. “God willing, he’ll come back, you know, here to his school and come back to his mom, because I miss him, I love him, and he’s very missed. He is everything to me after God.”
Andrea Morales contributed to this article.
Katherine Burgess is the government accountability reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at katherine.burgess@mlk50.com
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