Fearing ICE, some students in Minneapolis retreat to virtual learning

In Minneapolis, a nine-year-old young woman logs onto her information processing system, in the living elbow room of a fellowship quaker, seeing classmates through the screen instead of sitting next to them at school.  

She’s from Haiti, and she’s been doing virtual learning since her family recently decided to stop going outside for fear of being detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The girl’s mother says her daughter often cries, asking why she can’t go to school. She tries to explain it in words a child can understand, in a way that won’t create more fear. 

“We're just trying to navigate through it … it is a situation that is not under … our own control,” the girl’s mother says. “My husband cannot go to work, my kids cannot go to school, I cannot go to the supermarket. We cannot function.”

Theirs is just one of many families in Minnesota whose children are facing the reality that ICE could be hunting their parents — or them. That fear has sharpened following the arrest of five-year-old Liam Ramos last week as ICE agents reportedly “used him as bait” to detain his father; just one of four detainments involving students in recent weeks, according to school officials. 

What we know so far about the 5-year-old detained by ICE

And it’s changing the landscape of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Fewer front yards have children of colour playing in them; they are missing from school and extracurricular activities. Hiding in the face of uncertainty. 

“Kids are missing, kids are not coming back to school,” says Mandi Jung, a middle school teacher in St. Paul, Minn. 

Normally one of her classes has about 30 kids, but recently, it’s shrunk to about a dozen.

Many of her students are immigrants, Jung says. It’s a Spanish-speaking “magnet” school, so a large population of students are from Latin America. But many other immigrant communities are represented in her classes. 

“What I see in my classroom is the white kids are coming to school and the Black and brown students are at home.” 

The superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, Stacie Stanley, says in a video on her website she received hundreds of emails requesting online learning for students who don’t feel comfortable coming to school. Earlier this month, she made virtual learning an option for those families, recently saying that about 25 per cent of students, or 7,000, are using this option.

“Just like we did during COVID, [teachers are] being asked to accommodate on the fly and create lessons that kids can do at home,” says Jung. 

And it’s not just schools where kids are absent.

Wes Burdine runs a queer soccer bar called The Black Hart of St. Paul, and he’s been participating in the community surveillance, trying to monitor where ICE agents are — and to bear witness when they detain people. He’s also a father, and earlier this month he noticed that one of the kids on his son’s soccer team wasn’t showing up.

He asked the coach where the kid had been, and the coach told him that “the family’s not going out, they don't feel safe.” 

“Students [are] telling us like, ‘My dad got snatched. We don't know where my dad is,’” says Jung.  

The anxiety surrounding these detainments is hitting Jung’s students, even those who are citizens. 

While Jung says she told the child that citizens aren’t supposed to be detained, there have been many instances in which citizens have been held, and they are often from racialized communities.

“They're middle schoolers. They don't want anyone to know this is happening to them. They don't want their friends to know. They think it's embarrassing … because their accent is thick or because ... Their skin is dark, and they are just trying to make sense of what's happening.”

Jung says she sees her co-workers, many of whom are immigrants with families themselves, riddled with fear and anxiety about the safety of their children. 

“One of my co-workers recently became a citizen last year,” she said. “I was over at her house the other day, and every time a siren went she jumped out of her skin.” 

What it's like in Minneapolis after a second fatal shooting by ICE

Her friend was holding her baby and, each time, would “crush the baby into her chest.”

She’s watched another of her coworkers walk by with her passport on a lanyard around her neck — a reminder to anyone who might stop that she is a citizen. The woman has placed photocopies of her son's passport ”in his hockey bag, in his [backpack] —   everywhere short of stapling it to the child's forehead.”

Jung says she knows a student whose father was detained and the family was in a tight spot; the mother couldn’t work because her youngest child has autism and needs round-the-clock care.

So, the teacher paid the family’s rent. 

Her desire to help is reflected by others in the community, including the man sheltering the nine-year-old Haitian girl and her family.

“The worst situation brings out some of our best actions, like people risking their life [for fear of] being shot,” he said. “You experience a glimpse of true humanity.” 

Senior producer

Co-produced with Alison Masemann, The Current

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