The Minnesota Legislature’s Failure to Protect Students Is a Dereliction of Duty

By Carlos Mariani Rosa, MnEEP Executive Director

The 2026 Minnesota legislative session concluded this week without lawmakers passing basic protections to ensure students can safely attend public school free from fear, intimidation, and aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Legislators did reach agreement in several other important education areas.

Left on the table, however, was key legislation that MnEEP was among the first organizations in the state to advance that would protect students, families, and public schools by:

• Ensuring access to a free public K-12 education and safe spaces in schools for all students regardless of immigration status, 

• Protecting student privacy and data to the maximum degree possible under the law, 

• Limiting school cooperation with federal immigration enforcement unless due process is followed.

Beginning last summer, the MnEEP team and I met several times with key legislators, staff from the Governor’s Office, and the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE)  to urge adoption of an immigrant, refugee, and undocumented student protection law similar to the one Illinois passed in 2025. Illinois became the first state to codify into law the landmark 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision establishing a right to a public elementary and secondary education regardless of citizenship status.

The proposal gained broader support through the Minnesota Push Forward Coalition, a group of 24 education and racial justice nonprofits that MnEEP co-founded to resist federal efforts to diminish civil rights in education. We worked with former MnEEP Board member Rep. Samantha Sencur-Mura and Senator Alice Mann—both legislators of Color and members of the People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Caucus—to draft the Minnesota Education Protection Bill (HF 3409 and SF 3803), modeled after the Illinois law.

At the same time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security carried out its disreputable Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, featuring violent and deadly actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol aimed at Minnesotans regardless of citizenship status.

Minnesota students and their parents traveling to and from school were daily being accosted by masked, heavily armed agents in unmarked vehicles. Some were taken away to unknown locations. Teachers were stressed and exhausted as they patrolled school grounds to shield students from DHS violence. Many worked long hours helping young children get safely to and from school, delivering food to homes, and providing instruction in students’ homes.

MnEEP spoke out extensively about the traumatic impact the “surge” was having on Minnesota K-12 schools, students, teachers, and communities. While the focus of the “surge” was on the Twin Cities metro area, Greater Minnesota communities—including Wilmar, Rochester, Austin, Northfield, and many others—were also traumatized by this unprecedented wave of federal action.

We argued that the very purpose of our state’s public education system was being challenged and re-defined as schools became unsafe and parents kept their children home. Many schools suffered dramatic declines in daily attendance, with some seeing a 60% drop. 

The Minnesota Education Protection Bill sought to affirm what had long been common understanding and practice in Minnesota: that schools are safe and protective public institutions and that strict, universal rules governed by state law must be observed by everyone, including the federal government to maintain student safety.

It also affirmed that access to a Minnesota K-12 public education is universal and applies to immigrant, refugee, and undocumented students regardless of citizenship status. The bill further called for an actionable path for parents to enforce these rights under law. In essence, the bill sought to return Minnesota to the norms that existed before the federal administration’s unilateral elimination of the “sensitive locations” designation that had kept public schools off limits to the kind of aggressive immigration enforcement abuses unleashed during Operation Metro Surge. 

For years, schools were able to comply with reasonable immigration enforcement practices without the terror of armed agents surrounding campuses or following school buses as they dropped off children. The bill asserted that the state of Minnesota —and Minnesota educators—have a duty to protect children from harm, including harm caused by being terrorized by the federal government.

The Minnesota Education Protection Bill was introduced as a stand-alone bill in the House but was folded into a broader Senate proposal that also sought to regulate U.S. immigration enforcement activities in other areas, including health services. It passed the Senate on a partisan vote. The House failed to move the bill beyond the Education Committee.

MnEEP is pleased that, through consideration of the Minnesota Education Protection Bill, the legislature spent time documenting one of the most consequential moments in recent state history, including the killing of two Minnesota citizens by federal agents. The opportunity for the public to testify about how those federal actions caused exceptional harm to community peace and order is a vital function of democratic lawmaking.

However, the failure to pass the bill represents a shocking dereliction of duty to the safety and well-being of Minnesota students and to the integrity of our public schools. The fact that the proposal was not radical, but instead largely sought to restore practices that existed only a year ago, deepens our concern over the legislature’s unwillingness to act.

At MnEEP, we believe every student should be safe and protected from harm at school and that safeguarding students is among the highest obligations of public education. The fact that the harm comes from agents of the federal government does not diminish that responsibility.

As those agents now engage in physical violence, intimidation, and racial profiling of Minnesota residents, state law should treat those actions no differently than other forms of conduct that threaten or terrorize students. Such actions violate Minnesota values, undermine the safety of schools, and should be prohibited and regulated under state law.