\n<\/p>\n
Two Minnesota school districts and the state\u2019s teachers\u2019 union filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop immigration agents from carrying out enforcement activity at or near schools.<\/p>\n
The suit challenges the Trump administration\u2019s decision to revoke a long-standing policy that generally prohibited Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents from making immigration arrests and carrying out raids at schools and other \u201csensitive locations,\u201d including places of worship and hospitals, without permission from agency headquarters.<\/p>\n
In Minnesota\u2014the recent focus of a broad, intense immigration crackdown\u2014Department of Homeland Security agents have detained people and staged immigration enforcement actions at or near schools, school bus stops, and day care centers, the suit contends.<\/p>\n
In one district that signed onto the lawsuit\u2014Fridley Public Schools, near Minneapolis\u2014the change in policy has led to a dramatic drop in attendance, spurred a major expansion of online learning options, and strained staff time and resources, the lawsuit argues.<\/p>\n
In the other district that joined the suit\u2014Duluth Public Schools in northern Minnesota\u2014school safety officials now devote about 30% of their time to figuring out how to keep schools secure in the wake of the immigration crackdown, the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n
Immigration agents\u2019 presence has \u201ccreated an atmosphere of fear,\u201d at schools, including for native-born citizens and legally present immigrants, the suit argues: \u201cParents across the state are afraid to send their children to school, and schools have had to adjust their programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tricia McLaughlin, the Homeland Security Department\u2019s assistant secretary for public affairs, said agents\u2019 actions in and around schools are intended to protect children.<\/p>\n
\u201cICE is not going to schools to arrest children\u2014we are protecting children. Criminals are no longer able to hide in America\u2019s schools to avoid arrest,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cThe Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
An arrest might be made at school \u201cif a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cBut this has not happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is the primary defendant in the lawsuit, along with ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and their respective leaders. Both of those agencies fall under the Homeland Security umbrella.<\/p>\n
This is the third lawsuit challenging the Trump administration\u2019s decision to revoke the \u201csensitive locations\u201d policy at schools that cites its impact on student learning, attendance, and well-being, according to Education Week tracking. An earlier lawsuit by Denver public schools was dismissed, though the school system has the ability to sue again over the policy change.<\/p>\n
Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization representing the school districts and Education Minnesota, the teachers\u2019 union, has also mounted legal challenges to ICE\u2019s presence at churches and other religious institutions, with some success in federal district court.<\/p>\n
Immigration enforcement has been especially fierce and divisive in Minnesota since the Trump administration launched \u201cOperation Metro Surge\u201d in the Twin Cities in early December, the lawsuit contends. That brought a reported 3,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents into the area, or about five times the total number of Minneapolis police officers.<\/p>\n
Federal agents have shot and killed two American citizens in Minneapolis, sparking protests.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 4, the day the lawsuit was filed, Trump\u2019s border czar, Tom Homan, announced Homeland Security would withdraw 700 federal agents from the state.<\/p>\n
As part of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement surge\u2014and its decision to make schools fair game for that action\u2014federal officers have staged operations in the parking lots of at least two Fridley district schools, the lawsuit adds.<\/p>\n
Immigration agents have followed the district\u2019s superintendent and board members, according to the suit. District social workers have also seen agents following them when they bring food to families too afraid to shop at the grocery store, the suit says.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in the area, a paraprofessional in a St. Paul suburb was arrested by agents in her school parking lot. And the parent of an elementary school child in Brooklyn Center, a suburb near Fridley, was detained while waiting at a school bus stop.<\/p>\n
Immigration agents have also pulled over school district vans from multiple districts while on their way to school, including when students were on board, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 7\u2014the day Minneapolis resident Renee Good was killed by an ICE officer\u2014federal agents came onto the campus of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis and handcuffed two staff members. Agents sprayed students with pepper spray when one threw a snowball at them, the report contends.<\/p>\n
These actions have had a serious impact on student attendance and made it impossible for districts to continue normal school operations, the lawsuit argues.<\/p>\n
Schools in Minneapolis closed Jan. 8-9, just after Good was slain. Half of the St. Paul district\u2019s Spanish-speaking students were absent on Jan. 9, as were a quarter of its Somali students, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n
A handful of school districts in the area\u2014including Bloomington, Columbia Heights, Fridley, Minneapolis, Robbinsdale, and St. Paul\u2014have started offering online learning for students who are too afraid to come to school.<\/p>\n
In Fridley, with an enrollment of just over 2,700 students, over 400 families have opted into virtual learning. Educators have scrambled to create a new curriculum for the online classes, diverting financial resources and time from their other work.<\/p>\n
Fridley schools\u2019 attendance rate has dropped by nearly one-third during the immigration enforcement surge, the lawsuit notes. That could cost the district financially, since under state law, districts lose funding for each student who is absent more than 15 days during the school year.<\/p>\n
Similarly, school officials in Duluth also worry about losing state funding due to a drop in attendance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen increased anxiety among students, disruptions to attendance, and families questioning whether school remains a safe and predictable place for their children,\u201d Superintendent John Magas said in a statement. \u201cSchools function best when families trust that education can happen without fear, and that stability has been undermined.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Minnesota school districts and the state\u2019s teachers\u2019 union filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop immigration agents from carrying out enforcement activity at or near schools. The suit challenges the Trump administration\u2019s decision to revoke a long-standing policy that generally prohibited Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents from making immigration arrests and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2215,9849,20074,2466,7705,334,1335],"class_list":{"0":"post-43749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-activity","9":"tag-educators","10":"tag-grounds","11":"tag-ice","12":"tag-nearby","13":"tag-school","14":"tag-sue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}