California High School Reverses Suspension Over Pro-ICE Flyer

On Feb. 6, hundreds of students at San Diego’s Torrey Pines High School held a mid-school-day walkout to protest ICE and U.S. immigration enforcement policy. Students held posters conveying their condemnation, which included statements such as, “Fuck ICE,” “ICE is KKK spelled differently,” and “If You’re an ICE Agent, Ya Mom’s a Hoe!!”

No disciplinary actions were taken against those students. Yet two weeks later, the school suspended a student for posting pro-ICE flyers reading “We love [with a heart visual] ICE – Real Americans.” The school claimed the flyers constituted “harassment” and “intimidation,” according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, which contacted the school on the student’s behalf. 

The student, a junior at Torrey Pines, told Fox News Digital he posted the flyers because he wanted to show his support for ICE and provide an alternative to the negative messages about ICE on campus.

“I believe in ICE’s mission, and I think we should enforce our immigration laws,” he told Fox News Digital. “I also wanted to provide an opposing view to the anti-ICE opinions that the majority of students, teachers, and administrators at Torrey Pines seem to have and often share. I wanted to show students that the issue isn’t one-sided and that their opinions are common and matter, too.”

The student said he met with the assistant principal at Torrey Pines High School, who admonished him about this sign, arguing that the flyers were “unacceptable,” “incendiary,” and “dehumanizing.”

The San Dieguito School District spokesman in mid-March didn’t respond to RCP’s questions about the suspension.

Conor Fitzpatrick, a senior supervising attorney at FIRE, said school administrators can’t “pick and choose which opinions students are allowed to express.”

“Voicing an opinion which makes others upset is not ‘harassment’ or ‘intimidation,’ it is American democracy in action.”

This is the second controversial incident to make national news in a year at a school in the San Dieguito Union High School District, which is based in northern San Diego County and serves more than 13,000 students across 11 schools. In late May of 2025, eight high school students lay down in the grass at San Dieguito Academy High School’s athletic field and formed the shape of a human swastika to display to a Jewish student who was taking a flying lesson and saw the symbol of Jewish hatred from the air.

The Jewish student, a 15-year-old in the ninth grade, said his classmates who formed the swastika told him they were planning to form a smiley face on the field for him to see.

Even though the Jewish student’s family notified the school’s principal and assistant principal the same day the swastika incident occurred, three months passed before the district superintendent found out about the incident – not from the San Dieguito Academy administrators but by PeerK12, a nonprofit that defends Jewish civil rights in elementary and secondary schools.

The superintendent, Anne Staffieri, expressed shock about the antisemitic display and the school administrators’ failure to notify her about it. Staffieri wrote a letter to the community in which she acknowledged that “there was a clear and unacceptable breakdown in communication between the school and the district.”

“Those who are outraged, please know that I hear you,” she wrote. “We all know, or should know, that the image of a swastika is hateful and hurtful, and creation of this image is a call to action for our district to double down on our efforts to call out hate when we see it.”

The student’s parents reached out to the San Dieguito Academy, or SDA, the same day of the incident, leaving two voicemails, one with Assistant Principal Charles “Chuck” Adams and another with Principal Cara Dolnik.

The family met with Adams on June 3, who told them school officials were “upset by the incident,” but the family “would have to wait until after summer break” for any resolution to the issue, according to PeerK12.

The parents weren’t concerned about the delay but expected action to be taken when the school restarted in the fall. When nothing occurred, the family contacted PeerK12, which alerted the district to the school officials’ inaction.

It remains unclear if the students involved in forming the human swastika were disciplined. SDA Principal Cara Dolnik, in late September, agreed to resign from her position, effective May 21, 2026. The resignation agreement between the district and Dolnik said the decision was “mutually determined” and the decision provided “no admission of fault.” 

The situation with Adams is less clear. He appears to have left the district because he is no longer serving as an assistant principal at any of the high schools. When the San Diego Union-Tribune asked the district about his status in October, the district only recited his history of serving in various leadership positions over the last decade, ending it with his position as SDA’s assistant principal, which the district noted he has “maintained since 2022.”

Last month, the district announced a leadership shuffle among principals at area high schools. Justin Conn, who was previously the La Costa Canyon High School principal, would become the new principal at SDA. Meanwhile, Torrey Pines High School Principal Rob Coppo, who had served in the position for a decade and was named 2024 principal administrator of the year by the Association of California School Administrators, announced he would leave his position at the end of May. Coppo told the Coast News that it’s time for him to “slow down” as he nears retirement.

“I’ve been an administrator at Torrey Pines for 17 years – 10 of those years as principal,” he said. “I’ve had the longest tenure of any principal at this site, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done over the last decade. As I near retirement, it’s time for me to slow down.”

The school district did not respond to RCP’s inquiry about whether Coppo’s departure from the school was related to the social media scrutiny over the suspension of the student for hanging pro-ICE flyers at the school.