MINNEAPOLIS—In Inver Grove Heights, Minn., ICE agents arrested a special ed paraprofessional in the Concord Education Center parking lot in that suburb south of St. Paul.
In Brooklyn Center, another Twin Cities suburb, a parent of an elementary school student “was detained by federal agents while waiting at a school bus stop.” Both those arrests were on January 12. Both of those arrested were “profiled” by ICE.
On January 7, ICE agents grabbed teachers at a Spanish-language children’s center in Apple Valley and a Spanish immersion academy in Minneapolis. They pulled the second teacher from her car.
Duluth’s 21 schools are spending $573,000 more per month on more security. Its schools see “increased absenteeism among its students from immigrant communities because, due to the threat of ICE enforcement near school grounds and bus stops, they do not feel safe coming to school,” the school system says.
“Duluth is left with the decision to either expand online learning options for students, or risk that students will accrue more than 15 consecutive absences and be unenrolled from the school.” Disenrollment cuts school numbers, which in turn costs schools state funding.
And Fridley is where ICE agents used 5-year-old Liam Ramos as “bait” to lure his parents out of the house. Agents kidnapped Liam and his father, Adrian–despite the family’s asylum claim. They were flown to Texas and held there for two weeks. Now, Adrian told Telemundo, Liam wakes up in the middle of the night, sobbing, afraid ICE is going to grab the family again.
Welcome, so to speak, to ICE’s invasion of Minnesota’s schools–an invasion that drove the state’s big teachers union, Education Minnesota (EdMn), plus the Teachers/AFT, plus the Duluth and Fridley school districts, into federal court on February 4. EdMn is the joint AFT-NEA Minnesota affiliate.
Their demand: Throw ICE out of Minnesota schools, school parking lots, school bus stops—a distance of 1,000 feet away from each other. Issue a permanent injunction banning ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents from invading schools, kidnapping teachers and parents, and even kids.
The try to stop ICE’s depredations in Minnesota is important, as one of the mounting numbers of lawsuits challenging the no-knock, no-warrant violent and vicious invasions of schools, workplaces, and other sites, including courthouses, nationwide.
And it’s also a sign of the increasing national resistance to and revulsion against ICE, with the U.S. public now sharply negative about the agents and their violence.
“Activity at or near schools harms the teacher-members of EdMN,” the union said in the lawsuit. “It requires educators to spend additional hours supporting students who are absent, attending school remotely, or experiencing distress in the classroom because they fear ICE activity at or near schools.
“It forces educators to modify or cancel student activities and devote additional time and resources to protecting and supporting students and their families.
“Teacher-members themselves have experienced the impacts of DHS’s activity on and near school grounds, as well as the increased anxiety and emotional distress that comes with working in a location that is no longer a safe space.”
All those incidents and more indicate chaos in Minnesota’s public schools, and it’s all because of Donald Trump’s occupying army of 3,000-plus ICE agents having invaded the state.
ICE’s reply, in the memo turning its agents loose to terrorize schools: “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.”
As a result of that new dictate, “Parents, children, and teachers, regardless of immigration status, reasonably fear going to school,” the lawsuit retorts. “School districts and teachers across Minnesota have reported significant reductions in attendance rates since the onset of ‘Operation Metro Surge,’” the Trump regime’s name for its Minnesota occupation.
ICE and Border Patrol “actions have caused direct and irreparable harm to the abilities of school districts and educators to fulfill their functions–to educate children and to provide access to educational services and a safe learning environment.”
The Trump administration’s “unexplained and irrational change in agency policy is arbitrary and capricious and was done without undertaking notice-and-comment rulemaking,” which breaks federal law, it adds.
The problems with ICE in the schools aren’t just in the Twin Cities. They’ve spread north to Duluth and southeast to Rochester. Students are staying home, afraid to go to school, or have their parents pick them up there.
In Rochester, January absenteeism overall was 42% higher than in December, but up 116% among students receiving English learner services and 108% among Latinos, Superintendent Kent Pekel told Minnesota media.
School districts try to cope with that sea of empty desks by setting up lessons by Zoom, but that means teachers must create two lesson plans for the same unit in the curriculum—one for students in class and the other for students on Zoom. And staffers who ordinarily prepare meals for kids in school cafeterias are now going door-to-door delivering them to the kids who are staying home in fear.
“We know students can’t learn unless they feel safe,” Duluth Superintendent John Magas told The 74. “Right now, there is a great sense of lack of safety, especially among our historically underserved students, based on what we are seeing.”
The problem is, the lawsuit explains, the second Donald Trump administration’s massive sweeps of anyone with brown skin—including Minnesota’s Somalis, native Americans, and Hmong—besides anyone ICE suspects of being Latino.
Though the suit doesn’t say so, the problems have festered since an ICE agent shot and murdered mother and observer Renee Good, a citizen, and since Border Patrol agents shot and murdered Veterans Administration registered nurse—and unionist—Alex Pretti, who was also a citizen.
The murders have brought even more angry people out into the streets against ICE.
Before Trump retook the Oval Office on January 20, the Department of Homeland Security, parent agency for both ICE and the Border Patrol had worked out a detailed policy over the prior 30 years, strictly controlling when agents could enter “sensitive locations,” including schools and religious institutions, to arrest and detain undocumented people.
In one stroke, in a January 20 memo, Trump’s acting DHS Secretary—before permanent Secretary Kristi Noem took office—trashed that policy. Now, entering the schools is left to individual ICE agents’ “discretion” and “common sense.”
Noem has implemented that policy, as have her underlings, the suit says. “Discretion” and “common sense” were not defined in the federal memo. The suit names Noem and the bosses of ICE and the Border Patrol, both nationally and in Minnesota, as defendants. No trial date has been set for it yet.
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