When Maryam Abdulahi received an email from her principal outlining plans in case immigration agents came to the Bloomington middle school where she teaches, she wasn’t sure how much to worry.
“I’m trying really hard not to overreact,” she said in a video posted to TikTok. She knew President Donald Trump would try to follow through on his anti-immigrant agenda, she said. But she thought there would be protections in place in blue states like Minnesota. “And apparently that’s not the case.”
She hoped the district was just planning for a worst-case scenario, she said. “But the way the communication looks, it looks like [ICE is] coming tomorrow.”
Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration rescinded a longstanding policy limiting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in “sensitive areas,” including schools, health care facilities, churches, and social service agencies.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” according to a Department of Homeland Security statement. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
Trump’s plans to crack down on immigration with “mass deportations” have sent shock waves of fear through Minnesota schools. Some students fear they or their families might be targeted; others fear for their friends. Teachers and administrators worry that ICE may now come to school, and they fear for the safety of their students.
Carlos Mariani Rosa, the executive director of Minnesota Education Equity Partnership (MNEEP), described a “broad fear” from school administrators. Mariani Rosa is also the board chair of Academias la Paz, the recently merged charter school district of Academia Cesar Chavez and El Colegio High School, which have both seen packed meetings of concerned families in recent weeks.
“It’s not just undocumented people that are afraid,” he said. “[People with] lots of different immigrant statuses are expressing fear.”
MNEEP hosted a webinar drawing more than 100 participants in December to help school administrators navigate immigration law during a second Trump administration. The organization also put together a toolkit to clarify what ICE can and can’t do at schools, and how school officials can develop policies to best protect their students from immigration enforcement. Some Minnesota districts and charter schools have created policies to govern any interactions with ICE.
“Nothing about this that we’re doing is political,” said Sam Ouk, the director of equity and inclusion at Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools. Ouk helped develop the MNEEP webinar and is advising about 10 other districts on plans to address immigration concerns.
“We’re not challenging any laws, anything that’s coming down. We’re doing this and trying to create plans out here so that we can ensure that we have stability in the education that we provide to our kids, and the kids can continue to come and receive the education that they deserve there without disruption,” Ouk said.
Though ICE can now conduct enforcement activities, including searches and arrests, in or near schools, experts say that schools have the right to turn immigration officials away unless they have a valid court order. These experts urged school districts to develop clear policies to make sure that ICE must clear a high legal bar before gaining access to schools or student information.
“ICE still has to abide by due process and existing laws,” Mariani Rosa said. “ICE can’t just show up and expect schools to hand things over to them.”
Still, Mariani Rosa sounded a note of caution: those norms will only hold as long as people stand up for them, he said.
Could ICE come to school?
Mariani Rosa stressed that school districts have the right to make policies that limit ICE access to schools, students, and personal information. Those policies can include denying ICE access to the premises or student information without a valid judicial warrant, he said.
A judicial warrant is “very specific,” said Danielle Robinson Briand, an immigration attorney at Justicia Law in Minneapolis. Judicial warrants are typically issued in regard to a criminal charge, and come from a federal or a state judge, but not an immigration court judge, she said.
“It gives law enforcement the right to take a specific action within a certain time frame and it describes exactly who’s the subject of it, or if it’s property that they are seizing, what that is,” she said. “The judge has to find probable cause to issue the warrant. So it’s a high legal standard.” That high legal standard is rooted in the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, she said.
ICE itself has the power to issue a different kind of warrant with less legal weight called an administrative warrant. But schools are not required to comply with administrative warrants, Mariani Rosa said.
School staff are not trained to distinguish between different kinds of warrants. That’s one reason that David Aron, general counsel for Education Minnesota, the state’s largest educators union, recommends that educators not interact with ICE. The union held a webinar for its members earlier in January, which more than 200 people attended.
“All school staff should be directing agents to school administration,” Aron said.
Federal and state data privacy laws similarly mean that school officials cannot share personal information without a subpoena, Aron said. And if the school did receive a subpoena, federal law would typically require the school to notify the student’s parents first.
Robinson Briand said that subpoenas, like judicial warrants, need to be specific and targeted.
“I do not think a judge would sign his or her name to a general search of everybody that goes to the school,” she said.
Schools adopt ICE policies
Many schools moved quickly to announce their ICE policies or adopt new ones. Rochester Public Schools distributed an FAQ, drafted by the district’s legal counsel. The memo directs staff to refer any ICE inquiries to an administrator, explains the difference between a judicial warrant and an administrative warrant, and reminds staff of data protection laws.
In Bloomington Public Schools, where Maryam Abdulahi works, the district said it would require ICE to provide legally binding documents.
“Any visitor to the school would need a judicial warrant,” said Kate Martin, director of marketing and communications for Bloomington Public Schools. “We can’t share any student information without a warrant or subpoena, including whether the student is enrolled or at school that day.”
St. Paul Public Schools communications director Erica Wacker said that key school staff, including principals and security personnel, were receiving training on how to respond to immigration authorities, and that the district would continue to abide by its procedures governing law enforcement interrogation. The district is also advising families to update their emergency contact information, she said.
The Minneapolis school board passed a resolution last week affirming its commitment to a policy it passed in 2016, after Trump was first elected. That resolution said it would not disclose information to ICE “unless compelled by a valid court order,” and said that district staff should refer any ICE inquiries to the superintendent and general counsel.
Some schools had to create a new policy. At Sejong Academy, a Maplewood charter school that serves mostly Knyaw students, the board held a special meeting Wednesday to approve a policy for ICE interactions.
Hoonseok Oh, a Sejong Academy chemistry teacher who serves on the school board, said he hoped the resolution would relieve student frustrations and fears. Students were hearing rumors on social media that if they did not have a certain immigration status, they would be deported, he said. And these fears spread quickly in the tight-knit Knyaw community.
“Some students are really stressed out,” he said. Many are wondering “what if I get deported, what will happen to my friends? Or I have my citizenship, but my friend doesn’t have citizenship yet.”
Oh hoped the resolution would help calm their fears.
“It’s a safe place,” he said. “We’ll protect students.”
Maryam, the teacher at Bloomington Public Schools, said she felt “reassured” to learn that her district had a plan. She recalled Trump’s Muslim ban during her first year of teaching, when she was working in a predominantly Somali school. Her third-grade students had many questions and concerns that she wasn’t able to answer. This time, though, she felt like everyone in her school was aligned with a plan.
“Before the district communicated with us, I remember thinking they were going to tear down doors and just grab people,” she said. “I’m glad there’s people in place that have a script and know what to say and they are communicating with us. That makes me feel like it’s being taken care of.”
A ‘test of will’
Though some school staff felt reassured by their districts’ plans to minimize any ICE interactions, questions lingered.
What happens if a parent is detained while their child is at school? Should a student go to school at all, if there is a risk of being separated from their parents?
And what happens if ICE refuses to follow the law?
Aron, of Education Minnesota, said he’d heard a “tremendous amount of concern” following the first 10 days of Trump’s executive orders.
“The fact that some of them are clearly illegal just makes it worse,” he said. “We can tell a teacher that ICE needs a judicial warrant in order to apprehend a student. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s the way it will play out.”
Mariani Rosa said that having clear policies was a first step, but that schools would also need to prepare to stand firmly behind their policies if ICE comes. And that could be challenging for school districts.
“I think part of it is going to be this test of will that’s going to happen,” he said. “And a test of will is only going to be effective if schools are fully powerfully armed with information about what they can do.”
