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Carolina Sarmiento, a second-year graduate student in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning, spea

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Juan Aquino Jr., an urban planning graduate student, protests on campus Monday.

At the same time as cities across the nation were packed with demonstrators Monday, the northern corner of the UCLA campus mirrored such rallies on a much smaller scale.

The gathering was led by students in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning from within the School of Public Affairs. It was mostly composed of graduate students from the school and drew a crowd of about 50.

The Public Policy building was the meeting point for protesters planning on heading downtown where hundreds of thousands of demonstrators gathered.

Students held signs and led chants in both English and Spanish criticizing recently proposed legislation that would employ more stringent enforcement of undocumented immigration.

Speakers emphasized solidarity across cultures and equated immigrant rights to human rights.

Though the majority of the students present at the on-campus rally and at the protests in downtown Los Angeles were Latino, students from other immigrant backgrounds were present as well.

Matt Lum, a first-year urban planning graduate student whose parents immigrated from China, helped organize the rally.

Lum said a large portion of the urban planning department did not show up to class on Monday.

“Out of a class of 70, probably about 10 students were willing to go,” he said.

For Natalia Garcia, a second year history student, the protests are personal. Garcia’s parents came to the U.S. as undocumented immigrants, and both later received documentation. Her mother came over when she was pregnant to ensure her children would be American citizens.

“I do have (undocumented) immigrant relatives who are working and contributing to the economy,” she said.

Garcia said people take the risk to cross the border only because they are desperate for jobs.

“If people don’t want immigrants they should just not hire (them),” she said. “They need the labor of immigrants for this country to survive.”

The graduate students found support from the faculty of the urban planning department.

“I am an immigrant myself,” said Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, chairwoman of the urban planning department. “I thought that there are some issues that need to be heard. ... A number of students asked me not to hold the class, and I knew that most people would not be coming anyway.”

Most of the faculty accommodated student requests to not hold class, she said.

Other professors who did hold class agreed not to penalize students who did not attend, Fernandez said, and some professors joined the rally.

“I came to support what they’re doing,” said Jacqueline Leavitt, an urban planning professor.

The students left the rally to join the larger protest downtown.

Garcia described the downtown rally as masses of people, with low police visibility.

“There was a lot of solidarity,” she said.