‘I don’t have words’: 2 more kids from Liam Conejo Ramos’ Columbia Heights school taken into ICE custody
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Two more Minnesota children — a second grader and a fifth grader — were taken into custody with their mother on Thursday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
The children are from the same Columbia Heights elementary school as Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old whose detainment by ICE last week gripped the Twin Cities and the nation as images of the small boy flanked by agents in his winter hat circulated online.
Columbia Heights school officials said Thursday’s detention happened after agents apprehended the children’s mother during her court appointment earlier that day.
“I don’t have words. I mean, the frustration, the anger, yeah, it's overwhelming,” said Jason Kuhlman, principal at Valley View Elementary where the children attend school.
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Kuhlman said the children’s mother called the school early Thursday to tell them she’d been detained and asked school leaders to bring the kids to her at the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling because there were no family members in Minnesota to care for them.
“We had to deliver them to a detention center,” Kuhlman said.
“The kids were with us. They were safe. They feel comfortable with us because we’re caring adults. But to ask educators to deliver them is horrible, you know?” he added. “I will always abide by a parent’s wishes. And she wanted to be reunited with the boys. She wanted to go together. But great goodness (for ICE) to put us in a position like that. I don’t have words.”
He said the boys cried when he told them what was happening and were frightened and asked to hold a school nurse’s hand when they walked into the Whipple Building.
“She was holding both their hands. It’s a lot of people in there with guns and weapons and formality and security and masks,” said Leslee Sherk, principal of Columbia Academy, another Columbia Heights school leader who helped deliver the children to the Whipple Building.
“It is not a place for kids,” she added. “It's scary.”
Kuhlman said he believes the children were in shock.
“They were very quiet, you know, and very contained or stoic until we walked through the doors of the Whipple Building, and then the older one started to get upset, and rightfully so,” Kuhlman said. “He’s a fifth grader, so I guarantee he knows what’s going on. He knew about this, and I think the fear started setting in.”
Mother was ‘doing everything right’
When Sherk and Kuhlman entered the building with the boys, they said they saw other children being held there.
“They have cartoons on the television for all the kids that are coming in there and waiting — a box of books on the floor for the kids that are in there,” said Sherk, who added that the scene of detained children didn’t sit right with her.
Sherk and Kuhlman said they brought the mother’s immigration paperwork with them and asked to be allowed to take her and her children back to the family’s home since they had the documentation to prove the family’s lawful presence in the U.S.
They said they learned a judge had also issued an order requiring the mother and her children not be deported.
“There are so many people that are following the rules and doing the right thing and how we handle that says a lot about who we are and how we follow the laws,” Sherk said. “She was doing what she was supposed to be doing.”
They were told by those in charge of processing to wait until a supervisor’s input could be given, but no answer was provided to their request by the time they left.
“We shouldn’t have to be bringing students to a detention center because their mom was doing everything right and was detained. That’s not how we lose students, and that goes exactly against everything we stand for in schools and keeping kids safe.”
Kuhlman wasn’t sure what would happen to his students and their mother.
In recent weeks school officials and lawyers for detained children say ICE has been sending Minnesota families to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas within hours of their arrests. In several cases, these out-of-state removals happened against the orders of a judge.
At least six children from the Columbia Heights school district have been taken into ICE custody this month.
“We need to get our stories out there, because this is real. It’s not about Republicans, it's not about Democrats. It's about treating people like humans,” Kuhlman said.
“And we’re talking about kids,” he added. “When you start involving kids, and you’re talking our profession as educators, we’ve dedicated our lives to protecting kids, to educating kids, and now they’re getting snatched up. They’re getting taken.”
