BATON ROUGE — Students at Liberty Magnet High School staged a walkout on Friday in protest of ICE operations around the country and within the state. 

The protests come after two U.S. citizens were shot in Minneapolis in January and the highly publicized attempted removal of a 5-year-old boy. 

Louisiana became the target of Operation Catahoula Crunch in December, where, according to New Orleans' Mayor Helena Moreno, "the mode of operation was for agents to find and target groups of predominantly Hispanic individuals and then figure out who they are later." Moreno said there were countless stories of American citizens allegedly being chased, questioned and detained.

"We believe that no one here is illegal... immigrants helped build America," Liberty Magnet High students said.

"We feel like it's very disheartening to see our fellow classmates, fellow students in Louisiana, who are just like us, being treated this way. Especially when we have such a diverse population at Liberty," other students said

One student shared his fears that his parents would be deported. 

"Every time that my mom is late to come home from work, I feel like something happened to her, and I shouldn't be feeling like that," protestors said.

Another student shared that a student from another school was being picked up and dropped off by a parent's coworkers.

"His dad has a white coworker come pick him up for school every morning and every day because he's afraid to come outside his house," protestors said. "He's afraid to be seen."

Students believed that better tactics could be used by ICE rather than the physical encounters that are often seen online. 

"We feel like this isn't right at all. It's very hard to see and we're going to take a stand for it," students added.

A student also shared how the immigration crackdown has affected people in their lives. 

"One of my close friends, his mom and his dad actually got deported about a month ago," the student said. And it's really hard on him because now he's living with his grandparents, who really aren't suitable to take care of them so it's hard for him to go through life and do things as he normally did."

About 700 out of roughly 3,000 federal officers deployed to Minnesota will be withdrawn, according to border czar Tom Homan. This comes after state and local officials in the state agreed to cooperate by turning over arrested immigrants. 

Other schools protesting in the area included Woodlawn High School and Tara High School.