‘Where is our friend?’ ICE surge trauma lingers for preschool kids, teachers
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The flood of federal immigration agents into Minnesota last winter had a lasting impact on some of the youngest Minnesotans. At childcares across the region, classmates were suddenly gone, teachers were tense and families scared.
Those effects have spilled into the fall childcare season. Teachers say they’re still struggling to answer difficult questions asked by young children about what happened and what’s to come.
“I think it leaves them with a lot of questions and uncertainty about, well, if this child just disappeared, even explaining as best we could, does that mean that I might disappear, or I might have to move, or what if my other best friend has to move?” said Marie, a head preschool teacher in St. Louis Park.
MPR News agreed not to name the childcare center and identify Marie only by her middle name because she fears for the safety of her family.
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Marie recalled one of her students earlier this year leaving because her mother decided to return to their home country in South America with her two children after her husband, the girls’ father, was detained two blocks from work. Marie said he’s still detained. The family left “thinking that dad would be following soon after, and that has not been the case.”
The abrupt departure of their classmate has had a lasting impact on the other children. “We have, I'd say, five or six kids at least once a week: Where is our friend? Why did they have to leave? Can you tell me again?’”
More than 70 Minnesota children were detained from December 2025 to March of this year, according to an analysis by Sahan Journal.
A single school in suburban Columbia Heights had several children detained, including Liam Conejo Ramos, the boy in the blue bunny hat whose images gripped the Twin Cities and the nation as they circulated online after he and his father were detained.
It’s a reality that creates trauma beyond those children who must leave Minnesota behind.
Bryan Cooper is the parent of a rising kindergartner who was in preschool at the height of the surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents over the winter.
“If she sees somebody, you know, in one of those in one of those uniforms. She kind of says, you know, ‘Is that is that ICE? Will ICE come to my school? And things kind of along those lines,” Cooper said.
This past year has brought up challenges he didn’t anticipate, such as how to reassure his child she’s safe, what to do if one of her classmates suddenly disappears, or even how to build a new community network in a new school system.
“It's another thing for her to worry about. Certainly, you know a kid shouldn't have to worry about, but it's still something you know you're going to hear about,” Cooper said. “All of that has definitely been front of mind going into the school year.”
‘I can hold it together’
In Marie’s classroom, there’s a map of the world with a string connecting Minnesota to South America. It’s one way she helps the other kids understand the distances that others must travel.
“This is a picture of where our classmate moved, and here is the string that shows where our place is, so that they can see how far she had to travel to get there,” she said.
The questions and fears of her students have real weight. She said she leaves a lot of explaining to the children’s parents.
As for processing the loss of their classmate, that’s why they have the map and the string. The kids have been able to video call once and Marie collects letters and pictures the kids write to their friend.
“This happened back in probably April or May, and the kids are still asking, ‘Why did they have to move? I don't understand,’” she said. “And I'm sure they see stuff on the news, and it's been challenging. How do you explain to four and fives in a way that they understand?”
She said she knows the trauma of the year is something the kids will carry with them even if they don't remember details. “It may come out in behaviors later on that they see something happen and it's going to trigger a memory.”
“Going forward, seeing a police officer or someone in law enforcement or something may trigger something in their mind that causes them to act out because they're scared, because they're uncertain.”
She said it’s also affected the way she views her job as a preschool teacher.
“It is something I've never experienced before, and it's taught me to be stronger in ways that I never thought I could be, and that's just being there for these kids, and showing them that we can get through hard times together, and I can get through this,” Marie said.
“I can hold it together here at school, and then I can go home and have my little meltdown in tears.”
Even though a lot has changed she says her philosophy as a teacher hasn’t. The children come first. And she finds joy in that.
“It's always a new start, and it's always a happy, wonderful, exciting time to see what's going to happen next.”
