Notice of Thursday morning's walkout spread like wildfire across the Del Valle High School campus through cell phone text messages. The group of students walked out after first period after getting their cue to leave.

"They rang the fire alarm, and everyone ran," said student Amy Rodriguez.

Del Valle students took their march 2.5 miles down to the front steps of Ysleta High School, where more students joined in.

In the surrounding area, El Paso police secured the streets and helped keep the protesters under control.

Many marched on without a clear sense of what the immigration reform bill means.

"They're going to try and stop those going through the tunnels into the U.S. They going to try and build a wall in California, San Francisco," said April, a student at Del Valle High.

Those with close ties to immigrants feel walking out in protest is the right thing to do.

"We're doing this -- all the Mexicans, Hispanics and Chicanos or whatever -- because our grandparents work in the fields. We're doing this so they could pay attention so we could tell Bush, or the state, or the Senate that it's not going to stay like this," said Jorge Flores, a student at Del Valle High.

The 6.5-mile protest ended at the U.S.-Mexico border, with more chants at the Ysleta Port of Entry.

None of the schools in the Ysleta Independent School District were placed on lockdown.

In the past two days, the district's been sending phone messages to parents asking them to encourage their children not to walk out of school.

Pulling a fire alarm in a non-emergency situation is punishable by six months in jail and a $10,000 dollar fine.