Twin Cities families band together to support kids during ICE surge
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Families across the Twin Cities are banding together to protect and support frightened students, teachers and families as an immigration enforcement surge continues across the state.
At least three Twin Cities school districts canceled classes Friday as school leaders reported families were afraid and keeping their students home from classes.
At Lake Hiawatha Park in south Minneapolis, hundreds of parents, teachers and students gathered to rally and protest the presence and activity of immigration enforcement officers throughout the state.
“ICE out of our schools, ICE out of Minnesota!” Minneapolis parent Jennifer Arnold shouted into a microphone at the rally.
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Arnold, who has a second grade student in the district, said she started noticing her immigrant neighbors needed help last month.
“It started small, like second week in December. We did rides for 12 kids and then the next week it was 18 kids, and then the holiday happened and I was like, ‘Do these families have food?’ and so I asked and they didn’t have food and so I organized food drop offs for all of them,” Arnold said.
Other parents have been doing similar work. Christian Glanville, who has a student in a Minneapolis school, said he’s seen ICE agents ramming vehicles in his neighborhood.
“It’s a very direct threat of violence,” he said. “The suffering in our city right is widespread … as parents we can’t trust taking our kids anywhere right now … ICE needs to go.”
Glanville says he is one of many people in Minneapolis who are guarding bus stops and school drop offs and making sure families who need groceries are getting food delivered.
“It takes a different form every day,” Granville said. “And that’s the beauty of the work, it’s not roles, it’s tasks to be done and there are people willing to do the tasks.”
Families in St. Paul, where school is still in session, are doing similar work.
Victoria, who spoke to MPR News on the condition that we not to use her last name, has a child who attends an elementary school in St. Paul.
She and other parents at her school have set up volunteer security teams to monitor the neighborhood around their kids’ school to make sure it’s safe for kids to go out and have recess.
She’s angry at federal immigration enforcement’s presence in Minnesota.
“I don’t understand how these people do this on a day to day and then go home to their families after traumatizing our families and our community,” Victoria said. “How has this been normalized in our country? I’m really hoping that more people are willing to hold people accountable.”
Victoria said parents decided to set up their own watch patrols after teachers canceled recess earlier this week when they noticed what appeared to be immigration enforcement agents being active near their school.
Other parents in St. Paul who spoke to MPR News said they are helping drive their kids’ teachers and child care workers to school and day care because staffers working with their children were afraid of being targeted by immigration enforcement.
At Central High School in St. Paul, parents and staff members lined the sidewalks on Lexington Parkway and Marshall Avenue to watch students as they walked to their buses. The effort is in response to an altercation between border control agents and staff and community members at Roosevelt High School where students were hit with chemical irritants.
Central High School officials said the effort was completely community led.
“We know that ICE is in the area and that they've already visited a high school, so we want to be prepared in case they visit this one,” said Central High parent Joshua Wilkes.
“I have my whistle to blow in case of a federal presence,” Wilkes added. “I think that I have been out here with neighbors today and yesterday, other parents, people who don't have kids, but are just part of the community, just standing around, being present and witnessing what's going on.”
Wilkes said his kid is telling him that people are scared and he’s prepared himself to do what he can to protect students.
“My kid has friends with families who have complicated immigration status, and they're all super frightened. So, yeah, scary time to be here in Minnesota,” he said.
