ICE is patrolling Minnesota schools looking for children to shelter

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, Minn. – The hallways at Valley View Elementary School used to be filled with children, eager to get to class and see their friends. They are silent now.

Outside, immigration agents drive up and down the street several times a day. They stay at dismissal time, when the children walk home or are picked up. They follow parents who bring other people’s children home; The families of these children are too afraid to leave their homes. They wait at bus stops. At the nearby high school, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sit in the back trying to catch students leaving that way. School staff, retired teachers, parents and grandparents stand outside in shifts, with whistles, ready to blow if they see unmarked cars driving near the school when the children are outside.

It is common to see a row of empty cars lined up on the main road that runs through this Minneapolis suburb. The doors open wide and the cars sometimes continue to run, but there is no one in them: ICE agents pulled people out of them and took them away.

Such is life now for families in this largely Latino community that has been, for the past two months, under what the Trump administration says is a campaign to deport undocumented immigrants who are criminals. Except that’s not at all what’s happening here. Masked and heavily armed federal agents are simply terrorizing Black and brown people, regardless of their citizenship status or criminal record.

That includes children.

School leaders are caught in the middle of this, trying to continue giving children a safe space to learn while their friends disappear and children cry about not knowing if their parents will be home when they get off the bus. Even Zena Stendvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public School District, often patrols outside with parents and staff.

“I stopped wearing high heels to work,” Stendvik told News themezone. “I wear my boots to work, because I had to run to a corner or the back of the high school.”

“I stay on the perimeter of our school and help direct the students, either back into the building or, you know, just stay with me and watch for a second to make sure everything is okay,” he said. “We have a lot of staff and, like you said, grandmothers, grandfathers and other people in every corner of every school building, every morning, every afternoon.”

Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy whose photo went viral after ICE agents caught him last week in front of his home, is a preschool student at Valley View Elementary School. He is now locked up in a Texas detention center with his father, his deterioration of physical and mental health while his desk is empty at school. ICE agents allegedly used Liam as bait to detain his father, who is not in the country illegally and has no criminal record.

Ramos is one of six children from this school district recently detained by ICE. Two were only arrested on Thursdaya second and fifth grade student, both students at Ramos’ school. Federal agents captured his mother after a court date she had earlier that day to obtain updated information on her asylum status.

With no other family in Minnesota to care for her children, she contacted the school’s principal, Jason Kuhlman, and asked him to take her two children to the detention center to be with her.

“I’m putting kids in jail, in my opinion that’s what I was struggling with,” Kuhlman told News themezone on Friday. “Something I’m fighting so hard not to do, I ended up doing.”

“I stopped wearing high heels to work. I wear boots to work, because I’ve had to run.”

– Zena Stendvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public School District

By Friday morning, less than 24 hours after their arrest, the children and their mother had already been sent to the same nightmare Texas detention center as Ramos. There is also another fourth grader from his school.

“In 28 years, I have lost children to cancer. I have lost children to violence. I have lost parents,” Kuhlman said. “I am losing two children in a detention center and I don’t know if we will see them again.”

A 17-year-old nearly became the seventh student arrested Tuesday. He was on his way to high school, alone, when ICE agents stopped his car. In the end they let him go, but only because he was carrying his passport.

President Donald Trump suggested this week that he planned to “de-escalate” his crackdown in Minnesota after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, but Stendvik said nothing has changed in his community

“They are still very active,” he said. “We haven’t seen any changes.”

Some families have stopped sending their children to school. About 20% of the school district’s students have enrolled in virtual school over the past month, Stendvik said, and this is taking a toll on students academically and socially.

For those still entering Valley View Elementary School, they are greeted with signs on the front doors warning ICE agents that they cannot enter the property without a signed court order. These messages contrast starkly with the rows of rainbow signs in classroom windows throughout the school that read: “EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE.” (“Everyone is welcome here”).

Photo by Jen Bendery/News themezone

“It’s a little unsettling to be in the hallways, because there are a lot fewer students now,” Stendvik said. “I keep reminding everyone that we cannot normalize this.”

Minneapolis-area educators and parents gathered Tuesday for a press conference to try to convey how devastating ICE has been for children and their learning experience. Peg Nelson, a teacher for 33 years in Columbia Heights public schools, said all students from preschool through high school “have been terrorized by ICE operations.”

“These actions have changed the very fabric of our Columbia Heights schools and have made every student, teacher and parent less safe,” Nelson said. “Families are afraid to leave their homes for fear of racial profiling and unjust arrests. Students are afraid to come to school. We haven’t seen absenteeism like this since COVID.”

Meanwhile, educators are forced to take on responsibilities that go far beyond their normal duties. After teaching all day, they are delivering food to families and waiting with students at bus stops and parent pick-up zones, she said, moving as quickly as possible so families can avoid run-ins with ICE. They are raising funds to support immigrant families and each school in the district has become a food collection and distribution center.

“Even while they were delivering food, ICE has followed educators,” Nelson said. “The staff is doing everything they can to keep it together, but every day we ask ourselves, ‘How long will this be sustainable?’”

“Our community is giving everything it has to face these dangers, which our federal government has imposed on us,” he added, his voice breaking. “It is a time for our leaders to do the right thing and protect Minnesota’s children and educators by ending ICE operations in our state.”

Columbia Heights Public Schools

At the same event, the mother of a south Minneapolis elementary school student explained what a typical day is like for her now.

“Between bites of breakfast and sips of coffee, I check the neighborhood feeds to see what the neighborhood is like around our school and our major bus stops,” said Elizabeth, who gave only her first name. “Once I have successfully dressed my son for school, we head out, both with our whistles around our necks, in case we need to alert our neighbors of danger.”

Through tears, she described her son walking children to class when they were too afraid to go alone, and his “transportation service” to take other people’s children home because they were afraid to pick them up themselves. Some parents haven’t left their homes in seven or eight weeks, he said, and he can barely communicate with them. And yet, they have trusted her, a virtual stranger, to make sure their children come home after school every day.

“All this goes through my mind as I check my mirrors for security and continue singing along with K-Pop Demon Hunters” Elizabeth said. “It’s their parents who should be in the car singing and listening to their stories from the day.”

“This is not an acceptable way to raise our next generation,” he added. “That’s why we need ICE out of our schools and out of Minnesota.”

Kuhlman, the school’s director, said he worries that people don’t realize that what’s happening in Minnesota is just the beginning of ICE’s plans for other cities and states. Trump is not reducing tension at all in this community, he said.

He has come to dread the weekends because Mondays are when he discovers how many other children and their families were taken away.

“Forgive this analogy, because it’s horrible, but it sure fits: It feels like we’re in a school shooting,” Kuhlman said. “We’re not going to stop it, we’re just minimizing it.”