A few hundred Nashua high school students staged a walkout Wednesday to protest the aggressive federal immigration enforcement playing out nationally. Several said living in one of the most diverse cities in the state — or with immigrant parents — has left them fearful for family and friends.
Sixteen-year-old Manuel Lorenzo was the first in his family to be born in the U.S. He lives with his grandmother, who is from the Dominican Republic and speaks only Spanish. Lorenzo fears federal immigration agents won’t care that she is in the country legally.
“It really gets me in my heart because at any moment, that could be my family, the people that I care for,” Lorenzo said.
Nashua’s school superintendent said students who joined the walkout would face consequences because the district had not approved the event.
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That didn’t deter senior Kaylee Hall, who said she’s encountered prejudice because her mom is Vietnamese. She shared a story on an Instagram page for the event about an experience at a local fast food restaurant, where a man asked her, “What are you?”
Nashua high school senior Kaylee Hall helped organize the protest.
Hall helped organize the rally and a fundraising effort that helped cover expenses. Their “Stand with Nashua Against ICE Harm” GoFundMe page had raised more than half its $1,100 goal by late Wednesday.
“We do not have the power to vote,” Hall said, “but we have the power to speak.”
There are 49 languages spoken in Nashua schools and more than 1,600 students are learning English, according to the district. Senior Keegan Dolan said two things led her to partner with Hall to organize the walkout: news about a possible ICE detention facility in the nearby town of Merrimack, and comments she’s heard from students while interning at a Nashua elementary school.
Nashua senior Keegan Dolan said news of a immigration detention center in nearby Merrimack was one reason she helped organize the student protest.
Most of the school’s students are non-white, she said.
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“These tiny, tiny six- and seven-year-olds are scared for their parents, for them,” Dolan said. “And no kids should be scared of that.”
Jordin Lopez, a high school junior in Nashua, said she fears having an accent or looking “a little Spanish” can be enough to draw the attention of federal immigration agents.
Nashua junior Jordin Lopez, who is Hispanic, put it this way.
“Even if they are legally here, ICE doesn’t care,” she said. “They see you on the street. You look a little Spanish. You have an accent. You’re taken.”
Sixteen-year-old Alexa Couto’s parents are both immigrants. Her father, who is from Brazil, has told her how to react if she is stopped by an immigration agent.
“He just says, ‘Comply. Give your name. Follow instructions. Don’t fight back with them,’ “ Couto said.
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Like Lopez, she’s not convinced that would be enough for immigration and border control agents. “The fact is, even if you do comply, they don’t care,” Couto said.
New Hampshire immigration lawyer Ron Abramson, who has fielded calls about immigration enforcement from New Hampshire schools, is not surprised young people are as concerned as adults about the issue right now.
“People’s fear is palpable and justified because there used to be some semblance of guardrails or lines or limits to how far immigration enforcement would go,” Abramson said. “Those seem to have been obliterated in gthis administration. There’s no safe space.”
A few hundred Concord students staged a walkout last week to protest aggressive ICE enforcement.
A staple of many New Hampshire town fairs, the pig scramble may soon look a little different.
A bill signed into law by Gov. Kelly Ayotte last week requires the commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture to create best practices for any event in which people compete to capture a pig. Those guidelines will be published before the 2027 fair season, so they won’t be in place for any fairs with pig scrambles this year, such as the upcoming Deerfield Fair in the fall.
Generally, a pig scramble involves people of the same age competing to capture pigs that have been let loose in a large pen. Contestants have to catch the pig in a drawstring bag, and the first one to do so can take the pig home.
Rep. Cathryn Harvey, a Democrat from Spofford, is the prime sponsor of the bill. She said each fair has different rules for their pig scrambles, meaning some can be more humane than others. One aspect of the events she hopes will change is the bags pigs are captured in.
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“They’re putting an animal in a plastic bag on a hot summer day,” Harvey said. “It isn’t a great idea.”
Although some fairs already use more breathable bags out of burlap, Joan O’Brien, president of the New Hampshire Animal Rights League, said she’s also seen pigs being kept in plastic bags for long periods of time after the event. Not only would a burlap bag improve the pig’s ability to breathe in the heat, she said, but she also wants fairs to require participants to bring an animal carrier for the trip home. Her organization was ultimately in favor of the legislation.
“If you don’t have a carrier, you should not be allowed to leave your pig lying in a bag,” O’Brien said, adding that some fairs already ask contestants to bring carriers. “You should be taking them right home.”
The Deerfield Fair has implemented another rule that O’Brien and Harvey hope becomes part of statewide best practices — having parents supervise their child in the pen. O’Brien once witnessed a child hang a pig upside down by its legs and then lower it headfirst into the bag.
“In the heat of the moment, the kids get excited and they just do whatever it takes to get the pig in the bag,” O’Brien said. She said parents should work with the event referee to make sure their kid is handling the pig humanely.
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Harvey’s bill originally called for pig scrambles to be banned around the state, but both she and O’Brien feel that universal guidelines for fairs would still make the experience better for the animals. Even seemingly small things, Harvey said, like giving the pigs water after the scramble, would be an improvement to the current situation for them.
“I think that the bill will embolden people to speak up at these events,” O’Brien said. “If they think a pig is being mistreated, they’ll be able to say to themselves, ‘I know that there’s supposed to be a rule, so I’m going to say something.’ So I think that would be a good outcome.”
The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services collected samples of the unknown substance found in Sunapee Harbor and will be testing them tomorrow. Authorities say the spill was contained and prevented from spreading further.
HAMPSTEAD, N.H. (WHDH) – Authorities have launched an investigation after responding to a reported untimely death in Hampstead, New Hampshire, officials said.
The Attorney General’s Office is investigating the untimely death of a woman at a home in Hampstead, Attorney General John M. Formella announced.
While the investigation is just beginning, there is no known threat to the general public at this time.
The exact circumstances surrounding this incident remain under active investigation.
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