ICE Is Circling Minnesota Schools, Looking For Children to Take

Liam Ramos, 5, isn’t the only Minneapolis child sitting in a Texas detention center. Teachers and parents describe kids being hunted by federal agents.

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, Minn. – The hallways at Valley View Elementary School used to be bustling with children, eager to get to class and see their friends. They’re silent now.

Outside, immigration agents drive up and down the street multiple times a day. They linger at dismissal time, when kids are walking home or being picked up. They follow parents driving other people’s kids home; those kids’ families are too scared to leave their houses. They wait at bus stops. At the nearby high school, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sit out back to try to catch students exiting that way. School staff, retired teachers, parents and grandparents stand outside in shifts, with whistles, ready to blow if they see unmarked cars driving near the school when children are outside.

It’s common to see a string of empty cars lining the main road through this Minneapolis suburb. Doors are thrown open and the cars are sometimes still running, but there’s nobody in them — ICE agents ripped the people out of them and whisked them away.

This is how life is now for families in this largely Latino community that has been, for the past two months, under what the Trump administration says is a campaign to deport undocumented immigrants who are criminals. Except that’s not at all what’s happening here. Masked and heavily armed federal agents are just terrorizing brown and Black people, regardless of their citizenship status or criminal background.

That includes children.