Minnesota Schools Return Amid Concerns Over ICE Surge Impact
Minnesota schools reopen after ICE surge, but students show lasting trauma, fear, and anxiety affecting learning.
Objective Facts
The immigration surge in Minnesota ended last month, but its effects on children linger. During the height of the operation, the school added a virtual option, and more than a third of the students opted in. For many students, it was the first week back after nearly two months of online learning. The school principal says many students are coming to school with heightened anxiety in the aftermath of the ICE surge. Some kids didn't want to come back, "fearful that their parents are going to be taken while they are in school." Operation Metro Surge was an operation by ICE and Customs and Border Protection beginning in December 2025, initially targeting the Twin Cities and later expanding to all of Minnesota. On February 4, White House border czar Tom Homan announced that the administration was withdrawing 700 immigration officers from the state.
Left-Leaning Perspective
NPR spent time inside a Minnesota school talking with educators, parents, and children as it tries to help kids feel safe again after the ICE surge. The reporting documents the trauma affecting students—over a third opted for online learning during the surge, and when in-person instruction resumed, educators reported profound behavioral changes. Teachers noted that "in person, they would talk and participate and ask questions and all of that. They went online and they didn't say a word. They didn't do anything. Their faces were not the same." Progressive outlets and educators argue that the threat of enforcement near schools has created a chilling effect extending beyond immigrant families, affecting entire school communities. Attendance in several Minnesota school districts dropped sharply in early January, with some districts reporting attendance declines of nearly one-third within weeks, and in some districts, large portions of multilingual student populations were absent. Education Minnesota frames this as a moral issue, not a partisan one, calling for the Trump Administration to order all ICE operations to stay away from schools. Developmental researchers cited by the reporting explain that children need to be embedded in healthy systems including caregiving, classrooms, and neighborhoods to develop well, and that "the most important thing that the grownup world can do to protect children's development in light of ICE surges is to prevent this from happening again." The left's narrative emphasizes that schools should be sanctuary spaces protected from federal enforcement, and that the operation itself—not the closure responses—caused the harm.
Right-Leaning Perspective
Fox News experts argue that political decisions to close schools and shift to remote learning, described as being due to "safety concerns," will negatively affect students in the same way COVID-19 lockdowns did. They contend these decisions "aren't being made for children, they're being made for adults, often to score political points," and that "students deserve classrooms, not excuses." The right positions remote learning itself as the primary harm to students. A DHS perspective argues that ICE is not arresting children at schools but protecting public safety—removing criminals who might hide in schools. The statement notes that "the Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trust them to use common sense," and raises the hypothetical that "if a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect public safety." Some conservative Republicans asked the Homeland Security secretary to keep enforcement actions away from schools when possible, though two days later, some of those same legislators voted down a Democratic bill aimed at imposing similar limits. The right's narrative suggests that school closures and remote learning—driven by progressive educators and politicians—caused more damage than the ICE operations themselves, while defending enforcement as necessary for public safety.
Deep Dive
The March 22 reopening story reveals the aftermath of Operation Metro Surge, which deployed roughly 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota from December 2025 through February 2026. The operation resulted in the detention of US citizens and arrest of 3,000 people, and federal agents killed two civilian protestors: Renée Good and Alex Pretti, who were both US citizens. Schools closed temporarily, and attendance plummeted as families feared ICE activity near bus stops and school grounds. Now, as the operation has ended and students return to classrooms, educators report persistent anxiety and behavioral changes that mirror trauma responses. The disagreement over causation is fundamental. The left argues that the ICE presence and threat created legitimate fear in vulnerable communities, and that schools' online pivot was a reasonable harm-reduction response. Educational leaders point to developmental research showing that children need stable, safe environments and argue that federal enforcement operations directly contradicted that need. The right counters that the greater harm came from missed classroom instruction and argues that progressive leaders weaponized the crisis to resist immigration enforcement. Studies cited by the right show that remote learning during COVID-19 severely hindered student learning, with math and reading scores declining more during the pandemic than they have in decades. However, neither side directly compares pandemic remote learning (driven by public health necessity) with ICE-driven closures (driven by enforcement operations). Justice system developments suggest serious questions about the operation's legality. On January 28, 2026, a Minnesota federal judge found that ICE violated at least 96 court orders since January 1, 2026. On February 3, Judge Jerry W. Blackwell said that the "overwhelming majority" of cases brought by ICE involved people lawfully present in the United States. These rulings suggest that the operation, whatever its stated purpose of targeting dangerous criminals, resulted in extensive targeting of legal residents and citizens. Yet the operation continued largely unchanged until border czar Tom Homan's February 12 announcement of a drawdown, which came after the operation had already been scaled back. What remains unclear is whether the spring semester will show measurable recovery in student engagement and mental health, or whether the trauma will have lasting effects on cohorts who lost two months of instruction during a critical learning period.