Ontario, Calif. ? Hours after eighth-grader Anthony Soltero was called to the vice principal’s office, he took his stepfather’s rifle and killed himself.

The suicide is becoming a flashpoint in the national immigration debate.

Anthony’s family says he was threatened with jail for walking out of school to protest proposed changes to immigration law. Some activists and bloggers are portraying him as a martyr, the movement’s first casualty.

But school officials deny he was threatened with anything more than missing a dance or field trip and say he wasn’t even taking part in the immigration protests – he simply cut class.

Anthony, 14, ducked out of DeAnza Middle School on March 28, the same day thousands of students across Southern California took part in walkouts and protest marches. He killed himself at home two days later, leaving a suicide note in which he blamed the run-in with the vice principal, a family attorney said.

The boy’s mother, Louise Corales, said that over her objections, her son protested against federal legislation that would make it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally and would hasten construction of a wall along the Mexican border. The boy and his mother were born in the U.S., the family’s attorney said.

Jaime Soltero, left, father of Anthony Soltero, and Louise Corales, his mother leave a news conference with attorney Jeff Cohen at Ontario-Montclair School District office Friday, April 14, 2006, in Ontario, Calif. Hours after eighth-grader Anthony Soltero was called to the vice principal's office, he took his stepfather's rifle and killed himself. Anthony's family says he was threatened with jail for walking out of school to protest proposed changes to immigration law.

A student march planned for today in downtown Los Angeles will be dedicated to the boy.

Officials with the Ontario-Montclair school district about 45 miles east of Los Angeles expressed sympathy for Anthony’s family but adamantly defended the vice principal.

The school district said four students left school March 28. Supt. Sharon McGehee has said that interviews with students and faculty show the boy and the other students never marched with protesters. She said the students went to a store, then returned to the school for lunch.

Two days later, the vice principal told Anthony and three other students that for their truancy they could choose whether to miss a field trip or year-end dance, McGehee said.

That was not what Anthony told his mother by phone moments before shooting himself, nor what he wrote in a suicide note, according to attorneys for the family.

Attorney Samuel Paz asserted that interviews with the students support the mother’s recollection: that Anthony was told he could be jailed for three years and his parents could be fined. Anthony had been on probation for bringing a pen knife to school, according to the attorneys.