They came to the U.S. to attend middle school. Then the immigration crackdown began.

NINA MOINI: In middle school, so much can change over the course of a single school year, or even a semester. A new story by Sahan Journal goes inside a Minneapolis classroom, where students who recently moved to the United States are learning to navigate not just a new school, but a new country. Education reporter Becky Dernbach followed two eighth graders through their first few months of school, which coincided with President Donald Trump's return to the White House, a federal immigration crackdown, and heightened fears of deportation. Becky joins me now on the line. Thank you so much for making time for us, Becky.

BECKY DERNBACH: Absolutely. Glad to be here, Nina.

NINA MOINI: So you really got to know, I'm sure, these two students at Anderson United Middle School and their families. Why, I'm curious, did you choose the school in the classroom to focus on?

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah, so I stopped by Anderson as part of my first-day-of-school reporting. And while I was there-- you know, just a cute here's the first day of school, kids coming back to class.

NINA MOINI: Sure.

BECKY DERNBACH: And while I was there, I was introduced to the teacher whose classroom I ended up focusing on, Annie Connor, and learned that she was responsible for helping newcomers navigate middle school, navigate this country, and had whole classes dedicated to supporting them. And I thought, wow, I want to know more about that. I'm coming back.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, I love that. I love when you're at a story and then you get a bunch of other story ideas. That's how you do it. So let's start with the first student here, Yosie. And just to note for our listeners, you were using first names or nicknames for these students and other immigrants in the story. Would you tell us a little bit about the student you call Yosie and just her transition to Minnesota, and what did she tell you that was like?

BECKY DERNBACH: Sure. Yeah. So Yodie is from Mexico, and she is-- she's very studious. She's very interested in her schoolwork. And she came to Minnesota from Mexico after having been separated from her parents for several years. At that point, she hadn't seen her dad in six years. They all came before her.

And then, while they were here, they actually had a new child. So she met her baby brother when she arrived. And so for Yosie, her tightknit village in Mexico was something that really was important to her, but she felt like her educational opportunities were really limited there.

So when she arrived, she was reuniting with her family, getting used to a new school. And then one of the family members she was spending time with was a cousin who worked in roofing. Her dad and brother also work in roofing. And then shortly after she arrived, that cousin actually had an accident and fell off a roof and later died. And that was really a shock to her.

NINA MOINI: Wow. Yeah. So dealing with so much and navigating so much. And then there's another student called Santiago. What was his story?

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah, so Santiago is from Ecuador, and he and his dad had made the journey from Ecuador through the Darién Gap, and that was a pretty harrowing experience for him. And when he first arrived-- he's a very social kid, but he was pretty depressed when he first arrived and kept thinking about everything he had seen on the journey, the dead bodies he had left behind in the Darién Gap and the frightening train ride on La Bestia, which is a freight train that many people take through Mexico, like riding on the top of the train to get to the border. And so he was initially pretty depressed. And then as he acclimated, he was just more disengaged in school, more interested in hanging out with his friends, even if that meant skipping class, and just didn't really see a path to success.

NINA MOINI: Well, and to your point, students dealing with so much and then newly arriving to the United States and a whole different place on top of that, the school that you focused in on, there are other students in similar situations. There's been a growth in a population of students who've had these experiences. Are there resources at the school? I know you connected with the teacher. How are they dealing with these children coming in with these types of experiences?

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah, they have social workers and counselors available to support students who speak Spanish, and they also have other resources to help them with things like winter clothing, food on the weekends or food when school is closed for spring break or what have you. And yeah, they are doing their best to support these kids holistically.

NINA MOINI: Mm-hmm. Did you sense that the school or the teachers have any concerns or plans or fears around any potential encounters with immigration enforcement?

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah, I think that was a real worry for the teachers. And they had a training on what to do if ICE came because right as soon as Trump was inaugurated, there was a longstanding policy in place that ICE would stay out of sensitive locations like schools, and that was rescinded right away. And so they received training, and some of them were handing out "know your rights" information to kids.

But there's also a tension between you're an adult, really plugged in to current events, and then you've got these 13-year-olds who are-- middle school is just really a wide range of experiences and maturity levels. And you don't want to bring your own fears to the kids if they're not already thinking about that. So they were trying to balance that, trying to be prepared as adults and provide support to the kids without adding to their burdens.

NINA MOINI: Sure. And that's a lot to navigate. Did you feel, I'm curious, that the students felt welcomed?

BECKY DERNBACH: Oh, yes, I think they definitely did. And I think that they were really navigating this-- I think that they certainly felt like they were welcome in their school and felt like they were welcome certainly in certain parts of the community and that the teachers were there to support them and wanted them there. And then they also understood that there were other people outside the school who maybe didn't want them there, and so navigating that tension.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And that again, so much to navigate. How did you build enough trust with these students and then their parents and families as a journalist to be able to report? Because it can be hard to report on people who come without the documentation that they would need because of the fear and just the lack of trust that can exist as well.

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah. I think that showing up in that classroom every week, really helped me build that those relationships and build that trust. And they had a lot of trust in their teacher. They saw that she trusted me. And it was important to me also to connect with the families and make sure we built in a pretty sophisticated, informed consent process, to make sure that they were bought in too and that they wanted me to tell their story.

NINA MOINI: Mm-hmm. Folks might remember there was a federal raid of a Lake Street restaurant in Minneapolis that happened, I guess, during the student's eighth grade graduation ceremony. That was not an immigration raid, but people will remember there was a lot of confusion and misinformation at the time, and people were concerned. What was it like to have those events co-occurring? Perhaps you didn't know of the other event occurring, but that's a contrast.

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah, for me it was a really surreal split screen. I live nearby both of those events. I went by the incident on Lake Street as I was heading to the graduation. And the kids didn't know what was happening at that moment. They're not allowed to have phones in school, so they were not getting up-to-the-minute news updates.

But I saw parents' phones lighting up in the auditorium. People were telling each other what they had seen on Facebook and telling them to be careful leaving the school. And the teachers and adults in the building knew about it and were frightened, but they made sure to keep the focus on the kids and didn't bring that into the graduation ceremony.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, each of these students, talking about everything that they're facing now, they're just students who, I'm sure, have interests and hopes for the future and are wanting to work toward any types of specific careers or anything. When you talked with the students, how do they envision their futures? What are they excited about?

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah, Yosie is interested in becoming an immigration lawyer or going into international business. And Santiago is interested in-- he wants to play soccer. He's thinking about joining the Navy. He'd like to be an FBI agent. He's interested in forensic science. So yeah, a lot of dreams.

NINA MOINI: Mm-hmm. And just lastly, Becky, what's next for you in your reporting? Obviously, you're an education reporter. You do amazing reporting around schools and immigration. What are you looking at right now? Because so much is going on.

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah, there is a lot going on. Yeah. We'll see, Nina. Yeah, there's a lot going on that changes day by day, like this funding was rescinded. Oh, now it's back. But also just in the big picture, what are the impacts of what's happening on schools and students and communities? And so I am going to try to focus on that big picture as well.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and keep showing up. And I love that-- oftentimes, when we talk about these issues, we're talking about them from way up high. We're not talking to people who are actually having that experience. So I really appreciate just your diligence in your reporting. Thank you for sharing it with us, Becky.

BECKY DERNBACH: Yeah thank you, Nina.

NINA MOINI: That's Becky Dernbach, education reporter for Sahan Journal, a nonprofit news outlet focused on immigrants and communities of color in Minnesota. You can find her story at mprnews.org.