DENVER -- Several students at a Denver-area middle school have been disciplined for wearing shirts that depict the American flag -- an act that is in direct violation of the public school's recent ban on all flags, depictions of flags, or flag colors on student clothing.

One of the students at Shaw Heights Middle School said he was suspended for wearing a D.A.R.E. program shirt with a flag behind the logo. Another student said she was sent home for wearing a Marine Corps shirt. Another student told reporters that she was told to turn her Marine Corps shirt inside out and when she did and then later turned it back the right way, she was suspended.

Schools such as Shaw Heights in Westminster, Colo., and Skyline High School in Longmont, Colo., have enacted bans on all flags -- American and Mexican -- as a way to diffuse the confrontations in which students have engaged because of the recent immigration debate.

Shaw Heights Principal Myla Shepherd implemented the flag and clothing ban last week after several incidents, including one in which about 25 students wore camouflaged clothing on one day, Deb Haviland, director of communications and community relations for Adams County School District 50, told The Associated Press.

"As the tension increased, (Shepherd) saw that the clothing was starting to be the issue," Haviland said. "The thing that we have to always do is protect our students. Schools do have a right to address things like this in order to protect the safety and nondisruptive behavior in classrooms."

Shaw Heights has 650 students, of which about 46 percent are white and 41 percent are Hispanic.

Last week, students at Skyline walked out of class to protest the ban.

"We're very angry. This is my country. They make me stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance every day ... but then when I want to wave a flag they won't let me," one Skyline student said.

Skyline High School Principal Tom Stumpf has said he enacted the flag ban after American flags were brazenly waved in the faces of Hispanic students, and in one case, a Mexican flag was thrown into the face of another student.

"The (policy) evolved because the flags were being used, not as a symbol of cultural heritage, but the flags were being used as symbols of bigotry, a symbol of hostility. They were being used to inflame different groups and we're simply not going to tolerate that at Skyline High School," Stumpf said. "If they're using the flag in a taunting way, can administrators take that flag away? Yes, absolutely."

The schools fly the American flag in the classrooms and other areas.