Oregon’s farmworker union is calling on the state’s residents to protest the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown by not showing up to work, stores or school one day per month from December through May for a total of six days – two of which are federal holidays.
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste’s call for students to skip school as part of a series of boycotts comes as Oregon’s rate of student chronic absenteeism remains one of the nation’s highest. Some school officials said while they support the message the boycotts are trying to get across, they also need their students and staff at school.
Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, also known as PCUN, is encouraging people to join the boycotts on Dec. 18, Jan. 19, Feb. 16, March 16, April 1 and May 1.
Jan. 19 and Feb. 16 fall on holidays when schools are not in session, though the February date is typically used as a make-up snow day when needed.
“Do not work, do not shop, do not send your kids to school and do not spend money to support the economy,” PCUN’s president and executive director Reyna Lopez said.
During a Tuesday press conference, Lopez said that her organization was launching the “A Day Without an Immigrant” movement in response to the “lawless cruelty” by immigration authorities. More than 1,900 people in Oregon have been detained and separated from their families this year, she said.
Lopez pointed specifically to a father in North Portland who was arrested on his way to drop off his children at school, a man in The Dalles who was pulled out of a Home Depot store, and a 17-year-old U.S. citizen high school student who was detained during his lunch break in McMinnville.
At least eight U.S. citizens have been detained under Trump’s immigration dragnet in Oregon, she said. Immigration enforcement began to intensify in Oregon this fall and immigration agents, including those with U.S. Border Patrol, have used violent tactics to detain people across the state.
“‘A Day Without an Immigrant’ is an important step because immigrants are the backbone of our economy and they are vital to the state’s prosperity,” Lopez said during the press conference. “This country runs on immigrant labor.”
About a third of public school students statewide missed more than 17 days during the 2024-2025 school year. Research shows that significantly diminishes their chances to learn to read, keep up in math class and graduate from high school ready to take college or a career. Oregon also has one of the shortest calendar years in the country.
An Oregonian/OregonLive investigation earlier this year also found that in 10 metro-area school districts, at least 36% of teachers had missed 11 or more days of school for reasons other than professional development or other required school events in the 2023-2024 school year. Research suggests that student academic outcomes are impacted once their teachers are out of the classroom for more than 10 days.
Organizers emphasized that they had scheduled two of the boycotts on school holidays. But that still means that students and staff observing the boycotts would miss up to four days of school.
“We of course support the message they are trying to convey,” said Beth Graser, a spokesperson for the Hillsboro School District, where about 1,500 high school and middle school students walked out of class last week to protest the wave of immigration arrests in Washington County. “But we also want our students and staff at school, as we know the value of regular attendance and the need to have adults in our buildings.”
Salem-Keizer Superintendent Andrea Castañeda said she understood the motive for PCUN’s call to action, even as she too stressed that students should not skip school. About half of Salem-Keizer’s student body is Hispanic or Latino.
“PCUN’s role is to draw attention to the daily threat under which our community lives. (The role of schools is to keep) our students safe and provide educational stability,” Castañeda said. “We do that best when they are in school every day. The differences in our methods and tactics does not keep me awake at night. ICE taking our neighbors and traumatizing our students keeps me awake at night.”
During the press conference, Lopez said she’s “very concerned” about student absenteeism but added that she’s aware that some students are already afraid to leave their home to go to school and students are already protesting through student-led walkouts.
She encouraged parents to make a decision that works best for them.
“We’re calling for students to take action in activism in the way … that is age appropriate,” she said. “At the end of the day, those will be decisions that families should make, but we are calling for stoppage that everybody participates in.”
The first boycott on Thursday will coincide with a federal lawsuit PCUN is a part of which challenges the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “unconstitutional practice of denying people in immigration custody access to legal counsel.”
Oregonians must do everything in their power, Lopez said, to help immigrants who have called Oregon home.
“More than 1900 hard working families have lost their breadwinners this year,” she said. “Families are losing their homes. This is a growing humanitarian crisis.”