Anti-ICE protesters clash with attendees outside TPUSA summit in Tampa

Protesters lined the streets outside Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa Bay, Florida, on Saturday afternoon, rejecting President Donald Trump’s agenda and his crackdown on illegal immigration. 

The Tampa Police Department (TPD) disrupted a brief scuffle between the protesters and TPUSA attendees, after they began counter-protesting and chanting “USA” to the swarm of protesters shouting about a myriad of issues. 

Police officers were on the scene when a conflict with counter-protesters left one protester bloody in the street. 

The multi-day conservative conference has featured remarks by co-founder Charlie Kirk, Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, border czar Tom Homan and Donald Trump Jr., among other conservative leaders. 

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As Saturday afternoon’s summit continued inside, protesters marched outside, chanting, “No fear, no hate, no ICE in our state,” and “TPD, KKK, ICE – they’re all the same.”

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The protesters held large signs that said, “Defeat the Trump agenda,” and one man, wearing a “public school strong” T-shirt, held a large, oversized model of a toilet paper roll over his head. 

Messages reading, “TP for the USA: When history gets messy, FLUSH IT” and “100% whitewashed,” plastered the protest sign, trolling the ongoing conservative convention. 

The demonstrations on Saturday followed protests that delved into riots in Los Angeles last month, as rhetoric against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents has reached a boiling point. 

But the message was much broader this weekend as protesters held signs and chanted about a range of issues, from “Free Palestine” chants, rejecting the war in Gaza, to a “No ICE on campus” poster, speaking out against ICE raids targeting illegal immigrants. 

One woman held a sign that said, “Due process,” one of the Democratic Party’s leading arguments against Trump’s deportations. Many signs equated those attending the conservative gathering to “Nazis.”

After marching outside the TPUSA summit and confronting young conservative attendees, protesters moved back to City Hall for speeches. 

According to the protest flier via Mobilize, the protest titled, “Turn the Tide Against TPUSA – Reject SAS 2025!” was hosted by Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a student activist organization, and volunteers were organized by Indivisible. 

The protesters accused TPUSA of “turning our city into the staging ground for its largest youth indoctrination summit of the year … to spread an extremist agenda across schools, universities, and communities.”

The protesters organized to “defend LGBTQ+ & reproductive rights”, reject censorship in schools, “demand an end to deportations & U.S. aid to apartheid,” and “reject white nationalism,” according to the flier.