‘How Do You Teach a Child Who Has Been Pepper-Sprayed?’—The Impact of ICE on Educators

The exact number of immigration enforcement officers carrying out President Trump’s “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis, MN, has not been publicly announced. Estimates stretch well into the thousands. Though Trump’s newly designated “border czar” Tom Homan declared on February 12 that the operation would end, no details have been released, and people in Minneapolis continue to report ICE activities.

Regardless, the damage lingers.

The deportation campaign infiltrated Minneapolis neighborhoods, with ICE officers abducting people in front of schools, including parents and children. Among those detained: five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, apprehended with his father after preschool.

Ramos was then used as bait by ICE to attempt to lure other family members out of their home. After more than a week at a detainment center in Texas, Ramos, who became very ill while in ICE custody, and his father were reunited and flown home on February 1. They are now in hiding. In his public school system alone, four children have been detained by ICE.

Educators have witnessed ICE’s tactics firsthand and the often violent—repeatedly, deadly—confrontations. They live in a place where armed agents walk the sidewalk near schools and abandoned cars signal recent detainments. Daily, teachers count the students missing from their classrooms.

“If I try to visualize how ICE is impacting education, it is as if a large boulder has been dropped from a bridge into a lake.”

NPQ talked to three educators in Minnesota, from a 30-year veteran teacher of secondary education to professors at the college level, about the impact of ICE on their lives and students, what it’s really like in Minnesota, and how people can help. All three requested anonymity, be it partial or full, for fear over their safety.

No Place Feels Safe

“Some students have just stopped coming to class or responding to messages,” Sarah, a professor in Minnesota, told NPQ. Other students are showing up exhausted, admitting to their professor they’ve been up late worrying about their friends.

“In many ways, it feels like teaching during COVID—students not showing up, not turning in work, not engaging, dropping out. We’re only a quarter of the way into the semester, and only about half the students are regularly participating,” according to an adjunct professor who wished to remain anonymous.

Teresa, an educator who works with teens, told NPQ, “If I try to visualize how ICE is impacting education, it is as if a large boulder has been dropped from a bridge into a lake. The occupation is affecting everyone, but some more than others. Every student feels it, every teacher, and parent, and if they don’t, they haven’t felt it yet. There are families: children standing beneath the boulder as it is dropped; they are hurt the most, but it reaches us all eventually.”

Teresa said some students have not been in school for months, while others are trying to keep up with their studies online. Many students are having difficulty concentrating with both their school and home environments under siege. No place feels safe.

As Sarah said, “Some apartment buildings and houses are stalked and knocked on every day by ICE.”

One educator NPQ interviewed wished her learning community (which has had two students detained) had gone remote but it didn’t, while another educator said students at both campuses she works at are asking for flexibility. All the educators stressed their willingness to help students in every way they can, but suddenly switching between in-person classes to “multi-modal deliveries incorporating Zoom, but without any extra help or tech assistance or compensation” places an extra burden on educators. And those in Minnesota are already stretched thin.

Sarah admitted feeling “burned out and overwhelmed.” She continued, “At first, I shared as many resources as possible, things like ACLU videos and food drive locations. Now that extra labor of researching and communicating survival strategies has caused me to be so behind on grading and commenting…I’m underwater.”

“How do you teach a child who has been pepper-sprayed by someone in a police-like uniform?”

Another professor told NPQ that the precarious nature of her adjunct labor, getting resources to students and families in hiding, patrolling her own child’s school, “on top of the regular teaching and grading and course prep and AI policing, is making me depressed and hypervigilant and unhealthy.”

Though both her campuses have issued differing policies and procedures should an ICE incursion happen, “the only ‘protection’ being offered are signs posted on classroom doors saying the spaces are for students and staff use only.”

Despite the real danger of living, working, and helping families in the area, all the educators expressed that their primary concern was first and always their students’ safety.

“Right now, I don’t know any teacher who is concerned about learning outcomes except in the back of their heads when we think about the classroom a year from now, and even that concern is mixed with trauma,” Teresa said.

“How do you teach a child who has been pepper-sprayed by someone in a police-like uniform or is living with half of their family because the other half just disappeared one day…? The federal government’s impact on Minneapolis has been violent,” she said, “and we know that violence affects kids for a lifetime.”

“Our Community Is Showing Up”

Many educators, including the ones interviewed by NPQ, have been moved to action, delivering groceries to families afraid to leave their homes, and raising rent funds.

One educator said that the protests against ICE, which the rest of the world is seeing, “are important. But that’s just one part of the network that’s organized to defend democracy and our neighbors….Parents are patrolling outside schools. People are buying and donating and delivering food and supplies to neighbors afraid to go out….Our community is showing up for each other in such beautiful and astonishing ways.”

Teresa said, “Daily, I see people teaching us what community really means. The local YMCA that has countless bags of groceries for neighbors, that shelf is never bare…I hear and see whistles everywhere, and not everyone looks like an activist. I tell my own children, these are the reluctant activists, the ones forced to take action because once you see this violence in real life and realize that it’s really truly happening right outside your door, there’s no other role to have, no matter who you voted for or what political party you belong to.”

Teresa and the others continue to do these actions, including coordinating school carpools of vulnerable children and making sure every child has milk, despite the danger. As Sarah pointed out, nearly 30,000 Minnesotans have been trained as legal observers.

“We walked out our doors after each murder or abduction from ICE, knowing we were unsafe, and we did it anyway,” Teresa said. “I’ve never been prouder to be part of any group than I am to call myself a Minnesotan. Who keeps us safe is a common chant here, and the answer is always the same—we do.”

“The Answer Is Always Mutual Aid” 

The future of ICE in Minnesota is uncertain, as it is for the rest of the country. Many experts predicted a surge of ICE was next heading to Ohio due to the state’s large population of Haitian immigrants, but the ending of Temporary Protected Status for these immigrants was halted shortly before it was set to be canceled.

Minnesota serves as an example both of the extreme violence that can happen at the hands of ICE and what communities can do to protect each other. As Teresa said, “I want to believe that if each person really saw what was happening in Minnesota right now, especially to children, they would help put an end to it. I want to believe that I live in that type of world. I want to teach children that we live in that environment.”

“Get to know your neighbors now.”

Another educator pointed out, despite the news of the apparent end of Operation Metro Surge: “Nothing has changed on the ground, and I’m worried the rest of the country will stop paying attention.”

That’s a fear echoed by Teresa. “We keep asking teachers to do impossible things. To teach through a pandemic, to prepare our classroom if there’s an active shooter, to sacrifice ourselves, or our own families for a broken system that is not adequately serving the needs of every student, and now you are asking Minnesota teachers to do more…Stop asking us and start helping us,” she said. “Every kid deserves to feel safe at home and at school. If safety doesn’t exist there, we need to change that.”

All three educators said that Stand With Minnesota, a volunteer-run and crowd-funded project, is an excellent hub of community support, including resourcing organizations to help with food, legal support, rent, and observer training. The educators also encouraged people to contact their representatives and express support for defunding ICE.

When it comes to preparing for a possible ICE surge, the adjunct professor said, “Get to know your neighbors now—regardless of whether the threat is a flood or an invasion or a zombie apocalypse, the answer is always mutual aid.

“I also want people to know that we want ICE gone—abolished—not just gone from Minnesota to another city,” she said. “But if they do come to your city, know that we’ll continue to protest ICE in solidarity, as we hope you’re doing now.”

For More on This Topic:

School Drop-off and Pickup in the Age of ICE

ICE, Violence, and Legal Crisis in Minneapolis

The Danger ICE Poses to the Disabled Community