Hundreds of Roosevelt High School students walked out of school Monday afternoon, days after Border Patrol agents detained a special education assistant at the Minneapolis school and deployed chemical irritants on a crowd that included dozens of students.
“We’re fighting for our neighbors who can’t be out here,” said Genevieve Neerland, a 17-year-old high school senior.
“We just don’t want this occupation in our city,” said Clover Cary, 14.
“It’s like genocide,” said Deliyae Abraham, 15. “We’re becoming World War II all over again, Germany 1930.”
Monday marked the first day back at school for students, after Minneapolis Public Schools closed for two days following the incident at Roosevelt, ICE arrests near schools, and the fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother Renee Good by an ICE officer. School districts in Columbia Heights and Fridley also canceled in-person classes late last week, as did Cristo Rey Jesuit High School.
Effective Monday, Minneapolis Public Schools is offering a temporary online option for students who prefer not to attend school in person during what federal authorities have called the largest immigration operation ever.
In an email to school leaders, the Minnesota Department of Education said it had received many questions about online options and provided guidance on the requirements for online learning. St. Paul Public Schools has also offered an online option for students. Sejong Academy, a Maplewood charter school with a predominantly Karen population, canceled classes Monday and announced Tuesday as an e-learning day after an ICE encounter with a Sejong student and family member near campus over the weekend.
Many Roosevelt students opted for online learning, Neerland said, which felt especially evident to her at lunch.
“It’s kind of hard seeing it so empty,” she said.
In all of her classes that day, they’d discussed Wednesday’s events, she said.
“In chemistry, we learned the chemistry of tear gas,” she said.
Students marched around the school and down 42nd Street, some playing “Get Up, Stand Up” and “This Little Light of Mine” on band instruments, ultimately stopping at the top of a hill by the busy intersection of 42nd Street and Hiawatha Avenue. Passing cars and school buses honked in support. Neighbors came out of homes to show support, too.
Chrisley Carpio, who works at the Lucy Parsons Center across the street from the school, joined the march. She hadn’t been in the building on Wednesday, but her co-worker had witnessed Border Patrol agents “brutalizing students,” she said. She described the scene as “absolutely horrifying.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if business as usual came to a halt until ICE was out,” Carpio said. “They need to leave.”
Ingrid Lundeen, a 17-year-old senior, said she’d seen the Roosevelt encounter unfold on social media — including watching her 65-year-old math teacher “get pushed to the ground.” On Thursday, when school was canceled, she went to an ICE protest at the Whipple Federal Building. As she tried to leave the parking lot, ICE vehicles closed in on her. Lundeen said she’d challenged them.
“I just asked them, ‘Don’t you feel ashamed of what you’re doing when you came to my school?’” she recalled. “I was crying a lot and they just started laughing in my face, like they genuinely didn’t care.”
Seeing that reaction made her want to be even more proactive in the community, Lundeen said. Then she heard about the ICE arrest of two employees at the Richfield Target — where she used to work. Both employees are U.S. citizens and minors, she said.
Being back at school today was “really weird,” Lundeen said.
Her International Baccalaureate classes, which are mostly white, had most students in school today, she said. But in the classes with more students of color, “there’s nobody.” She said she had been volunteering with food shelves delivering food to people who are not leaving their homes, and would be bringing a math book to a friend who is too afraid to attend school in person.
“It’s so sad because they just can’t get the same education,” she said. “I’m really angry. I’m trying to turn my anger into something that can help people, instead of just being really angry. But it’s really hard.”
Roseville students also walk out
Students of Roseville Area High School also walked out of school Monday in protest of ICE activities happening around the Twin Cities.
Hundreds of students occupied the Hamline Avenue bridge overlooking Hwy. 36, waving handmade protest signs and chanting.
Ariel Jimenez, a junior at Roseville Area High School, is the main coordinator and organizer of the walkout. He told Sahan Journal that his father was detained by immigration at a worksite, and the whole school was very supportive of him and other students who had that same experience. After the killing of Renee Good, a lot of students at his school came up to Jimenez with the idea of organizing a protest.
“We need to do something for our school, to show up. We need to stand up for what we believe,” Jimenez told Sahan Journal. “ICE were surrounding our city, and I know a lot of students are afraid of what’s going on. So we wanted to do this walkout to speak up and say ‘Hey, we don’t want you guys here.’”
The walkout was entirely student-led, Jimenez said. The student organizers reached out to marshals and the Roseville Police Department to help keep the protesters safe.
The protest line walked down Country Road B2 to Lexington Avenue around 11:40 a.m. They held a moment of silence for Renee Good, Keith Porter Jr., who was shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles, and “all the people that have been disrespected, taken and killed by ICE.”
“The main message [of the walkout] is that we’re telling ICE ‘you’re not welcome in our city.’’’ Jimenez said. “We don’t want you guys terrorizing our students. We don’t want you guys watching over our students. …You guys can go back to where you guys came from.”
More students are expected to stage walkouts in the coming days. St. Paul Public Schools students are planning a walkout Wednesday that will culminate in a rally at the State Capitol.
