From Rapid Response to Lasting Protection for Minnesota’s Public Schools

By Carlos Mariani Rosa, MnEEP Executive Director

On Thursday, “border czar” Tom Homan declared an “end” to the targeted immigration enforcement that has traumatized and destabilized communities across Minnesota. Yet the damage inflicted by an occupation of more than 3,000 federal agents does not disappear when federal agents leave our streets. The harm ICE actions have inflicted on our children—their sense of safety, their trust in public institutions and public spaces, and their ability to learn—continues long after enforcement actions taper.

The disruption to the safe, supportive learning environments Minnesota promises every student runs deep. Rebuilding those conditions will require renewed commitment to the students our schools exist to serve and to Minnesota’s promise of an equitable public education for every learner, regardless of citizenship status. Public education cannot fulfill its purpose when students are forced to navigate fear, absence, and instability. Restoring these conditions is essential not only for individual students, but for upholding our state’s commitment to educational equity and the civic foundation our public schools sustain.

Weeks ago, MnEEP warned in the Star Tribune that the federal enforcement surge posed an existential threat to Minnesota students and public schools. In the days and weeks since, those warnings have been borne out across our state.

During the height of the surge, Minnesota students, educators, and school communities experienced escalating disruption, fear, and trauma. Federal agents abducted five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos after he returned home from preschool in Columbia Heights. Militarily armed and masked agents followed school buses, delayed student pick-up and drop-off, waited at bus stops, and circled schools in unmarked vehicles while detaining adults and minors, including U.S. citizens and lawful residents.

Recent data shows that in metro-area schools where enforcement activity was most concentrated, attendance dropped by as much as 40 percent as students became too afraid to attend. In some Spanish-immersion schools, school leaders reported more than 60 percent of students were absent in the days and weeks following major enforcement actions. Thousands of Minnesota students are now missing critical instructional time, disproportionately affecting students of color, immigrant students, refugee students, and first-generation learners. In a state that already faces some of the nation’s widest racial disparities in academic outcomes, disruptions of this magnitude threaten to deepen those gaps and undermine years of progress.

And while immigrant and refugee learners and their families face the most direct and lasting harm, every student in Minnesota is affected. Students return to classrooms shaped by fear for their friends and neighbors and by the visible presence of federal enforcement in their communities. These conditions undermine the safety, trust, and stability that learning requires and weaken the foundation of belonging that public education is meant to provide for every learner.

In Minnesota, we believe public education is a right for every learner. We know that excellence in public education cannot exist for some students if it is denied to others. Federal actions are pushing us toward a different and deeply harmful belief system—one that abandons our moral and legal obligation to provide education for the benefit of all and instead reverts to a system of exclusion that serves only some Minnesotans.

What is being done to Minnesota’s students and schools demands sustained resistance. Educators, school leaders, and communities have already acted—mobilizing rapid response efforts to support students and families targeted by federal immigration enforcement actions. But emergency measures alone cannot secure the future of our public schools. 

This moment requires transforming those immediate protections into durable, long-term commitments that defend public education and reaffirm Minnesota’s shared obligation to an equitable, safe, and supportive public education system.

This is why MnEEP has joined with education policy organizations, including Educators for Excellence Minnesota and EdAllies, to help create and facilitate the Minnesota Push Forward Coalition of two dozen organizations in the education sector. Together, we are working to codify protections in state law so every student, regardless of citizenship status, can safely access public education and the necessary supports to uphold their rights, their humanity, and Minnesota’s promise of an equitable future.

Minnesota’s strength as a state is inseparable from its commitment to public education. Our quality of life ranks among the highest in the nation, in large part because of our longstanding investment in universal access to schooling. That commitment is now under direct strain. Protecting and strengthening our public education system is essential not only for today’s students, but for the continued vitality of our communities and our democracy.

Join us in affirming Minnesota’s commitment to public education and in rejecting efforts—federal or otherwise—that harm students and undermine the ability of our schools to serve as safe, stable places for their belonging, learning, and success.

Carlos Mariani Rosa

Please consider becoming a member of MnEEP. We want to listen and learn from you—how  your, your school, and your students have been affected, and how you have been responding. Your perspective helps guide our shared work to advance racial equity in education for every learner.

Safe & Supportive Schools Toolkit: Evolving resources, guidance, and emerging best practices to help schools remain safe, stable, and supportive environments for immigrant, refugee, and first-generation learners.

Push Back, Push Forward Toolkit: Tools, strategies, legal analyses, and coordinated actions to support school leaders and educators in resisting harmful federal threats and rollbacks and advancing a racially equitable public education system across Minnesota.