Minnesota school districts say federal agents still causing daily disruptions
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Fridley Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Lewis has spent the past seven weeks essentially running her district from the back of a school van.
After a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Macklin Good in Minneapolis in early January, Lewis said she and others in her north suburban community started seeing armed, masked federal agents roaming their neighborhoods.
For two hours each morning and two in the afternoon since then, Lewis has patrolled streets and parking lots surrounding her school buildings looking for signs of agents disrupting her district’s work.
Driving around Fridley on a recent day with a reporter in tow, she pointed out driveways and intersections where agents had been observed conducting raids, following school officials or speeding down streets while children walked to school.
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“I had to cancel school because of all of our staff that were not feeling safe to come to work,” Lewis said. “We stood up many different supports, and this patrol was one of them. I was really looking at us patrolling not to interfere with ICE operations, (but) just so that we could make sure that ICE didn't interfere with school day operations.”
ICE activity is ongoing, she said.
Despite the announced end of the two-month surge of federal immigration agents, Lewis and others say there’s still plenty of evidence that ICE continues to interrupt daily life for students, staff and families in Fridley and other districts with high concentrations of immigrant kids.
The district continues to offer online learning to hundreds of children too afraid to leave home. School staff and volunteers continue to deliver groceries to families, and guard crosswalks at school dismissal and arrival times.
Leaders at schools throughout the Twin Cities say it’s not clear to them whether they can safely resume normal school operations.
“I guess maybe it was a false hope, but I kind of thought it (ICE activity) would be back to pre-surge levels today, and clearly it’s not,” Lewis said.
‘We’ve normalized things that aren’t normal’
Driving through Fridley, Lewis notes streets where ICE vehicles showed up just outside the homes of school board members.
She points out an elementary school parking lot that was used to stage a raid, and a crosswalk where school staff held children back on sidewalks while vehicles driven by federal agents sped back and forth during arrival time.
“It used to be (ICE) presence at arrival and dismissal — an intimidating presence to let us know that they were there. Then it started to elevate into me being followed two times in one day, it also elevated that same day into ICE sitting outside of three board members' homes that day and a board member being followed,” Lewis said.
On Feb. 4 — the day border czar Tom Homan announced a “drawdown” of 700 agents — Lewis said ICE agents posed as journalists outside a Fridley school wearing bright orange bands on their arms reading “press.”
“They were yelling and screaming at our staff, yelling and screaming at parents, recording parents taking pictures, and recording and taking pictures of our principal, scaring (them) at arrival,” Lewis said.
“We have a roundabout that isn't school district property but a lot of our kids cross there, and we have three crossing guards. (ICE) got in that roundabout and were preventing our kids from crossing,” she added. “This all happened that day.”
Steve Monsrud is the safety and security coordinator for the district. To him, what federal agents are doing in Fridley is unlike any sort of behavior he’s observed from law enforcement before. “They seem to be pretty aggressive and short-tempered, and maybe not the best trained.”
Lewis said she believes Fridley became even more of a target of intimidation after she spoke publicly about the effects of ICE raids on children as the district signed onto a lawsuit calling on the Department of Homeland Security to keep agents away from school property.
“Isn’t this unacceptable? To children?” she wondered aloud. “We’ve normalized things that aren’t normal, which is bad.”
‘Limping along’
"Lewis said she has not seen ICE activity targeted at her district leaders or buildings in several days, but her team has heard reports of federal agents "being active" in the wider Fridley community."
Still, the relative quiet has led her team to begin asking when the district might be able to return to normal.
Four hundred and fifty students in the Fridley public schools have been in online learning for several weeks. School leaders say at least another 100 students have stopped coming to classes. Some have dropped out, others have moved elsewhere. In some cases, the district simply doesn’t know what happened to the kids.
Kellie Reichert, a Fridley substitute teacher who’s been leading third and fourth grade online classes, said the kids she’s working with are diligent despite the tough circumstances.
“They’re juggling so much, and they work so hard, and also oftentimes navigating that extra challenge of learning English, a lot of them,” Reichert said. “They are so happy to see their peers’ faces and hear their voices, and contribute to the conversation.”
Some of her students, she said, are caring for younger siblings as they juggle schoolwork.
“I’ll see students log in with their infant sibling in their lap,” she said. “I’m teaching multiplication strategies to a fourth grader and like an 18-month-old.”
Reichert and other educators remember what virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic did to kids’ academic progress and mental health. But they’re trying to get basic math and literacy instruction to their students every day as well as helping students maintain social connections.
‘Can we take a breath?’
Fridley had initially planned to end emergency online learning on Feb. 13. Now they’ve extended the option through Feb. 27. But Lewis isn’t sure if she’ll need to extend the option.
She also doesn’t plan to stop the food deliveries her staff and community volunteers have been doing to help those in the district who can’t leave their homes.
Other districts are facing similar dilemmas.
In St. Paul, the state’s second largest school district, the number of students learning virtually has decreased from 7,000 to 4,700 in recent days.
The district, which is in frequent contact with the St. Paul Police Department, said it’s also seen a decrease in federal agents conducting activity near schools.
“Cautiously optimistic is the phrase of the day,” said St. Paul Public Schools director of communications Erica Wacker.
“We’re monitoring the situation daily, trying to be as responsive as we can be to the needs of our community,” Wacker added. “School is safe, we have solid safety protocols in place.”
The district is trying to decide whether or not to extend virtual learning options for students.
In North St. Paul, principals are surveying families on whether or not they want to continue online learning. About 500 students districtwide have chosen to study online during the surge of federal agents in Minnesota.
“It’s very challenging. We’re kind of limping along with a lot of outreach and … independent study with, you know, conversations and check-ins and tutoring online. (But) it’s a very ineffective or inefficient way to operate,” said Christine Tucci Osorio, superintendent of the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale schools.
“Remote learning is tough for anybody but when you throw in the fact that kids are young and little and, in some cases, you know, may not have a lot of English speaking support at home for homework and activities.”
North St. Paul leaders, she added, are trying to figure out, “Can we take a breath and start to wind it down?”
Fridley and North St. Paul have seen dozens of students return to in-person learning this week, but leaders in both schools are unsure what this week will bring.
In Fridley, Lewis said she will be taking her cues from what staff and student families do.
“Our families are probably going to be our best tellers of if they feel safe or not,” Lewis said. “I think I gave myself a little bit of false hope that I thought today (the surge) would be, like, done. And then when those reports (of ICE activity) came in, it just … hurts your soul.”
