Abigail Esquivel, a U.S. citizen who spends her time in Las Vegas and Juarez, Mexico, chants while marching on Las Vegas Boulevard, near Flamingo Road, during the Day Without Immigrants rally on Monday. She said her parents are illegal, but they own a restaurant in Las Vegas. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

Organizers were pleasantly surprised with Monday's local immigration reform demonstrations that together drew up to 13,000 people, and activists plan to keep up their fight for sympathetic treatment of illegal immigrants.

"We thought it was fantastic," said Carlos Mejia of the A.N.S.W.E.R. group, one of the organizers of the day's first protest, which began early Monday at Jaycee Park. About 3,000 marchers participated in that demonstration.

"Now we go forward and collect petitions."

Those petitions to Congress demand equality for all immigrants living in the U.S.

"No one should be criminalized for trying to survive," Mejia said of illegal immigrants who are "forced to come here for work."

Culinary union officials, who sponsored a 6 p.m. immigration rights rally at the Fremont Street Experience, said they had collected 40,000 signatures on a separate petition to Congress calling for immigration reform that includes a clear path to citizenship.

Monday's protest was "a good step," said D. Taylor, the Culinary's secretary-treasurer, "but we have a lot of work to do."

Police on Tuesday upped their estimate of the crowd that marched along the Strip following the Culinary's rally. They placed the number at 8,000 to 10,000.

An estimated 400,000 people marched in both Chicago and Los Angeles, but fewer than 10,000 turned out in cities including Dallas, Atlanta and Phoenix, which all have large Hispanic populations. More marches are planned in major U.S. cities, but there are no immediate plans for a next Las Vegas march.

The mood in the Hispanic community following the rallies has been "exuberant," said Chris Roman, general manager of Entravision-Las Vegas, which owns two Spanish-language television stations and two Spanish-language radio stations.

"The overall response is one of 'We did it, and we did it gracefully,'" he said.

Roman said the Univision television station enjoyed "phenomenal" ratings on Monday, and the two radio stations, KRRN-FM 92.7 and KQRT-FM 105.1, received many calls from people pleased about the turnout for the demonstrations and that they were peaceful.

Las Vegas police spokesman Jose Montoya said 100 officers were called to oversee the morning demonstration. Many of them were held over from the graveyard shift and were paid overtime.

He said 120 officers worked the evening demonstration, but he wasn't sure how many of those were off-duty officers who were called in specifically for the rallies.

One person was arrested for antagonizing protesters at about 9 p.m. Monday at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Monte Carlo Drive, Montoya said. The man was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of inciting breach of the peace.

All five of Clark County School District's regions reported higher than average absenteeism at their schools on Monday, some higher than 50 percent, according to a district spokesperson.

Students who skipped class Monday received unexcused absences. Students who have 10 or more unexcused absences in a semester can be denied credit for their classes.

About 50 percent of students at southwest Las Vegas's Bell Elementary School were absent Monday. Principal Anna Webb said 86 percent of the school's students are Hispanic.

She said most of the parents who pulled their children out of school were forthright, saying their children would participate in the demonstrations.

"Parents were very open with us in regards to what they were going to do," she said. "We went with the adage that you do what you need to do."

But some said their children were sick, Webb said. She said those children would not be excused unless a doctor's note could be provided.

Some who wrote letters to the Review-Journal said they weren't sure what parents were accomplishing by allowing their children to miss school.

"Parents should have wanted their children to stay in school so that they don't get these menial jobs that nobody wants to do," Patrick Mendez, an American of Nicaraguan descent, said in an interview. "The parents were perpetuating a cycle where they were teaching their kids that it's OK to skip school."

Others said they were angered by the two demonstrations in general and said that illegal immigrants shouldn't be demanding rights from Congress.

"Our government needs to know that illegal immigrants don't vote. They don't have a right to vote," said Connie Gilmore, a 13-year resident of Las Vegas.

Mark Edwards, who founded the Wake Up American Foundation and hosts a show by the same name on KDWN-AM 720, said Monday's demonstrations hindered the organizers' cause and only strengthened the American base who is infuriated by the flood of illegal immigrants to the country.

"The more they do these, the more they wake up segments of America that were asleep at the wheel."

That opinion is shared by the Minuteman Project, volunteers who patrol the border and strongly oppose illegal immigration. They plan to launch a tour starting Wednesday en-route to Washington, D.C., for a May 12 rally and visit to Capitol Hill.

"Our power is not putting a million people on the street, our power is putting 10 million people at the voting box," said Stephen Eichler, the group's executive director.

There was some reported friction between organizers of Monday's two protests. The morning protest was designed to be part of a nationwide Day Without Immigrants economic boycott that encouraged workers to skip work and students to skip school. The Culinary held their rally later in the day and, along with local casinos, encouraged workers not to skip work.

"I support the concept but can't support it as part of a boycott of work and school," said Pilar Weiss, the Culinary's political director. "I don't know what happened to those people. Did those kids get disciplined, miss an exam? Did anybody got fired or disciplined?"

But Mejia said he was in full support of the Culinary's protest.

"We are in complete solidarity," he said. "We want the same thing, we just want it in different ways."

Review-Journal staff writer Lawrence Mower and The Associated Press contributed to this report.