Minnesota Districts, Teachers Union Sue Federal Government for Targeting Schools

A coalition of Minnesota school districts and the state’s teachers union, Education Minnesota, on Wednesday filed suit in U.S. District Court demanding the reinstatement of a decades-old federal policy barring immigration enforcement activities near schools and other “sensitive locations.” 

The longstanding rule prohibiting federal agents from targeting schools was repealed Jan. 20, 2025, the day of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a press release. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.” 

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The suit names Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, her department, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and numerous federal officials as defendants. As of press time, DHS had not responded to The 74’s request for comment. 

At a press conference in Nogales, Arizona, on Wednesday, ICE Director Todd Lyons — a defendant in the suit — praised the Trump administration’s policies. “We didn’t need any new laws,” he said. “We just need the ability to enforce the ones we have.”  

White House border czar Tom Homan has insisted immigration agents have “de-escalated” actions and that 700 will soon leave Minnesota. But education leaders say schools are being targeted as intensively as at any point in the last two months. 

Even with the promised reduction, the number of agents still in the state would be larger than the 2,000 present when Minneapolis mother Renee Good was killed by ICE a month ago.    

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos — depicted in a photo that went viral worldwide as he was abducted wearing a knit bunny hat — was released from a Texas detention center and escorted home to the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights on Feb. 1 by Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro. 

The next morning, however, ICE agents stationed themselves in at least one school parking lot in the district, and a bomb threat was received, Superintendent Zena Stenvik told news media. Multiple Columbia Heights students detained in recent days have yet to be released.       

The lawsuit lists numerous examples of federal agents occupying and detaining staff in school parking lots, following superintendents and school board members, tackling and tear-gassing students and staff, pulling day care workers from their cars, arresting parents and students at bus stops and pulling over school vans transporting children to school, among other actions. 

As a result, the complaint states, districts have been forced to cancel classes and create online learning alternatives for students — including non-immigrants — whose families can’t safely leave their homes. In several school systems, more than a third of children are absent or learning online on any given day. Absentee rates are much higher in programs specifically geared for immigrants. Many students have simply disappeared. 

Because Minnesota uses daily student attendance numbers to calculate per-pupil funding, impacted districts anticipate a loss of revenue, the lawsuit states. One of the districts that brought the suit, Duluth Public Schools, has spent more than $500,000 worth of staff time planning new security measures in response to the enforcement surge. 

Over the last two months, half of the district’s administrative team’s time has been spent planning responses, Duluth Superintendent John Magas told The 74. “We know students can’t learn unless they feel safe,” he said. “Right now there is a great sense of lack of safety, especially among our historically underserved students, based on what we are seeing.”   

The complaint filed by the Duluth school system, Fridley Public Schools — which has twice been forced to cancel all classes because of ICE activities at or near schools — and Education Minnesota says federal agents’ actions “violate the Administrative Procedure Act and constitutional protections, and that DHS failed to adequately consider the educational and community impacts when it rescinded prior guidance limiting enforcement in sensitive locations.”

No district or taxpayer funds are being used for the lawsuit, Magas said. Much of the cost is being borne by the teachers union.  

From 1993 to 2025, immigration agents were required to have advance, written approval if they believed exceptional circumstances merited an exception. School bus stops were explicitly named in the policies as being off-limits. Immigration officials were required to report agents’ activities near protected areas. 

“The presence [of ICE] agents conducting investigative activity at schools, or in venues where children’s activities occur, has always been a point of particular sensitivity,” a 2007 version of the rule explained. “Accordingly, it is important to emphasize that great care and forethought be applied before undertaking any investigative or enforcement type action at or near schools, other institutions of education, and venues generally where children and their families are present.”

In 2021, then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memorandum reaffirming the “fundamental … bedrock” principle behind curtailing enforcement. The agency, it said, “can accomplish [its] enforcement mission without denying or limiting individuals’ access to needed medical care, children access to their schools, the displaced access to food and shelter, people of faith access to their places of worship and more.”

“The budget negotiations going on in Congress right now, we’ve heard a lot of things about body cams and things like that,” said Magas. “I haven’t heard a lot about a return to protected status.”

In Rochester, Minnesota, January absenteeism overall was 42% higher than in December but up 116% among students receiving English learner services and 108% among Latinos, according to Superintendent Kent Pekel. Of the district’s 15,500 students, more than 200 recently enrolled in the district’s existing online school, while an average of about 550 were absent on any given January day. 

In the last few days, however, enrollment has rebounded. It’s hard to know exactly what’s prompting the return, Pekel told The 74, but families he has spoken to say they are nervous but also want their kids in school. Informal networks of educators and parents have been out in the community dropping off food, providing rides and making sure families know children are missed.   

Unlike other districts, Pekel said, Rochester’s schools don’t seem to be a target of immigration agents. “They have been near our schools, but we haven’t had instances of them being on our property or circling schools,” he said. But if that were to change, enrollment would likely fall. 

“One incident could wipe that out.”