A federal judge Wednesday denied a bid by two Minnesota school districts and the state’s largest educators union to keep immigration enforcement activity away from schools.
In her order denying a preliminary injunction, Judge Laura Provinzino said that plaintiffs — Fridley Public Schools, Duluth Public Schools, and Education Minnesota — had failed to prove that any harms to schools during Operation Metro Surge stemmed directly from the 2025 policy change they sought to challenge.
The plaintiffs expressed their disappointment in a joint statement.
“The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to allow immigration enforcement at and around schools has disrupted classrooms, driven families away, and created an environment of fear that no child should have to endure,” they wrote. “While the court declined to immediately stop that activity, this is not the end of our fight.”
They said that while denying the preliminary injunction allowed immigration enforcement activities near schools for now, they would continue pushing forward with the case.
Starting in 1993, and most recently revised in 2021, agency policies discouraged immigration officers from conducting enforcement activity near schools. The Department of Homeland Security changed that policy on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term in office.
The districts and union argued that the process to change the policy had not followed the proper protocol, and cited numerous examples of immigration officers coming on school property during Operation Metro Surge. In some cases, parents were detained at school bus stops. In one incident, Border Patrol officers deployed chemical irritants on students and staff outside of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. The plaintiffs argued that these encounters near schools were the direct result of the change in agency guidance, and asked the court to restore the 2021 policy.
But Provinzino, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, noted that even under the previous policy, immigration enforcement near schools was never prohibited. She found that the change in policy did not cause the uptick in immigration activity near schools.
“The 2025 Guidance, in short, did not change DHS’s ability or authority to engage in enforcement activity at or near protected areas,” she wrote. “What has changed, evidently, is DHS’s willingness — not its authority — to conduct immigration enforcement activity at or near protected areas like schools.”
Provinzino continued: “Instead, the School Districts’ alleged harms flow directly from DHS’s enforcement activity during Operation Metro Surge at or near schools, which they do not squarely challenge here. And in any event, the relief they seek would not remedy those harms or make them less likely to occur in the future.”
Even if she reinstated the 2021 guidance, Provinzino said, she could not direct the Department of Homeland Security how to use its enforcement discretion or tell it to return to the priorities of previous administrations.
Provinzino’s ruling echoed arguments from Department of Justice attorney Jessica Lundberg.
In an April 8 hearing, Lundberg said the government wanted to emphasize that “swapping out the 2025 memorandum for the 2021 memorandum will not have a meaningful impact on the immigration enforcement activity plaintiffs are complaining about today.”
Amanda Cialkowski, arguing for the plaintiffs, pushed back during that same hearing.
“If you see the myriad examples in the declaration, including [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] pulling up in front of an elementary school and blasting ‘Ice Ice Baby’ on their radio, there is no world in which that would have been permitted under the prior policy,” she said. “Yanking people out of their cars, including U.S. citizens with passports, that would not have been permitted under the prior policy.”
But though Provinzino appeared sympathetic to the “significant emotional toll” incurred by teachers as they helped students and parents through the surge, she found the government’s legal arguments more persuasive.
Provinzino found that the school districts were unlikely to prove they had standing to bring the lawsuit, citing a lack of injury recognized by the law. She said that federal agents’ incursion onto school property was not a trespassing violation under Minnesota law; decreased school attendance did not qualify as a legal injury because there is no federal Constitutional right to a public school education; and that districts’ financial expenditures incurred by responding to ICE activity were not required.
“In other words, the School Districts, for understandable and even admirable reasons, chose to implement these measures; the 2025 Guidance did not require them to do so,” she wrote.
She also found that the union, which had claimed harm both as an organization and on behalf of its individual members, was unlikely to show it had standing.
While the plaintiffs expressed disappointment, they stressed that the case was not over.
“While the court’s decision is not what we hoped for, we remain committed to this effort,” said Adelle Wellens, spokeswoman for Duluth Public Schools. “We will continue to work toward restoring protections to ensure that schools remain places of learning rather than fear.”
