More than 70 Minnesota children detained in Operation Metro Surge, data show

On Martin Luther King Day, immigration agents detained a 5-year-old Venezuelan boy and his mother in a Walmart parking lot in Mankato. 

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents demanded the mother reveal the location of a man named Mohammed, whom she did not know. They then handcuffed and shackled her and drove her around for hours with her kindergarten son. By the next day, both had been sent to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in south Texas. 

The day after the arrest in the Walmart parking lot, ICE detained another Minnesota 5-year-old, Liam Conejo Ramos, in his Columbia Heights driveway. The viral photo of Liam wearing his blue bunny hat galvanized public attention. Gov. Tim Walz and other officials demanded details about Minnesota’s detained children from then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“We don’t know how many others are in the same situation that didn’t get a photo that went viral,” Walz said in a Feb. 3 news conference. 

A Sahan analysis of court records and federal deportation data now has an answer.

In all, immigration officials detained more than 70 Minnesota children between Dec. 1 and March 10, according to a Sahan Journal analysis of detention records and habeas corpus petitions. The data analysis represents the most thorough accounting yet of the Minnesota children detained during Operation Metro Surge.

The analysis revealed some troubling trends: of the children who were detained, nearly two dozen were held in custody for more than 20 days, in violation of a longstanding legal settlement. Teens who were detained alone were sent to Christian youth shelters in Michigan, which made it hard for their families to find them. And nearly half of the children detained have since left the country.

At least seven Minnesota children were still detained as of March 10, according to the data. That number includes five boys between the ages of 14 and 17 whose location was not specified. At the time the data was collected, all five teen boys had been detained for at least a month; one had been in custody for more than three months. 

Two Minnesota girls were also still in detention as of March 10. The older girl, age 13 or 14, had been at Dilley for six weeks at the time the data was collected; the younger girl, who’s 4 or 5, spent more than a month in detention, including several weeks at Dilley, before being transferred to an unknown location. 

The Department of Homeland Security told Sahan Journal it could not confirm the status of the seven children still detained without their names. 

Parents and school officials who spoke to Sahan Journal, along with attorneys who work with families, say the impact of the detentions will ripple through the lives of the children.

Minneapolis attorney Kira Kelley represented two families in which children were detained: a 2-year-old from Ecuador flown to Texas with her father in violation of a court order, and a pair of Venezuelan brothers, ages 8 and 11, who were sent to Dilley with their mother.

“This is a systemic violent act, to be detaining children, that has long-term consequences,” Kelley said. “It’s massively detrimental to the well-being of these families and our whole communities.”

A new and aggressive tactic

Data show that more than 30 Minnesota kids were sent to Dilley during Operation Metro Surge, where many detainees noted poor food and water quality and contended with a measles outbreak.

The mother and son detained in the Walmart parking lot remained at Dilley for more than three weeks. Immigration officials confiscated the boy’s stuffed dinosaur toy and winter hat. At Dilley, they were provided with expired and spoiled food, which the child refused to eat. At the time they were detained, the mother was breastfeeding her youngest child, but while she was at Dilley, her milk dried up.

About 20 of the Minnesota children detained during Operation Metro Surge have been deported. Another 10 have self-deported or withdrawn their application to admission to the United States.

Nearly all of Minnesota’s detained children came from Latin American countries. A 16-year-old Somali refugee, a Pakistani teenager age 15 or 16, and a 4-year-old Moldovan refugee were also detained.

Sahan Journal analyzed Minnesota habeas corpus petitions involving children as well as immigration detention data obtained through a public records request from the Deportation Data Project. The Deportation Data Project is an organization that collects and posts public, anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets. It’s led by researchers at the law schools at the University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles.

The detention data provided by ICE may be incomplete. Where habeas petitions or public reporting were available, Sahan Journal was able to match biographical information with the detention data for nearly every child. A Columbia Heights fourth-grader appears to be missing from the dataset. Another child with a habeas petition, a minor U.S. citizen detained with two adult noncitizens, also does not appear in the data. 

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disputed the data from the Deportation Data Project, saying the data had “not been reviewed, audited, or given context,” and that therefore the data was “not accurate.”

A review of habeas petitions and interviews with the children’s lawyers reveals patterns in their detentions. Multiple children were detained with their parents at routine immigration check-in appointments. Some were detained in hotels with ICE agents watching them around the clock. Several teenagers detained alone were sent to Christian shelters in Michigan. Some children were sent out of state in violation of a court order.

DHS defended its actions in the statement.

“ICE does not ‘raid’ schools, target children, or separate families,” the statement said. “Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration’s [sic] immigration enforcement.”

But immigration lawyers who spoke with Sahan Journal said the detentions of children already living in the United States represented a new and aggressive tactic.

Kevin Heinz, a Twin Cities immigration lawyer who has been practicing for 15 years, represents a Burnsville 2-year-old detained and sent to Texas with her mother. In the past, he said, children and families were typically only detained when they crossed the border, as their claims to entry were processed. The detention of children at the border, and images of kids in cages, caused a public outcry during President Donald Trump’s first term.

“After people were inside the United States,” Heinz said, “it almost never happened where a child would be detained. I don’t actually think I’ve ever seen it happen.”

Students come back ‘more somber’

As ICE agents fanned out across the Twin Cities and the state during Operation Metro Surge, however, children were increasingly swept up in the daily arrests — and are still dealing with the repercussions.

In Columbia Heights Public Schools, six students — including Liam and the brothers Kelley represented — were sent to Dilley. A seventh was detained briefly at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building and released. One high school student voluntarily returned to Ecuador with her mom, but the others have returned to school — though some are facing active deportation cases.

“All of the students who have spent time in detention have come back more somber,” said Kristen Stuenkel, communications director for the district.

Kevin Centeno, the full-service community school coordinator for Valley View Elementary School in Columbia Heights, said that students coming back from detention show signs of post-traumatic stress. That trauma is activated by sirens and whistles that might indicate law enforcement officers are nearby, and loud noises and bright lights, like those in the cafeteria.

“At these detention centers, they don’t shut the lights off at night,” he said. “Ultimately you’re sleeping with bright lights, loud noises.”

The children’s reaction to their trauma varies by age.

“The older they are, it’s easier to pinpoint their trauma because they can talk,” he said. “But the younger they are, the behaviors show the trauma: kicking, yelling, screaming, especially for our younger ones who were detained.”

Attorney Claire Glenn represented two Minnesota children detained during Operation Metro Surge. One of her clients, a 16-year-old Minneapolis boy from Ecuador detained when he left home to pick up dinner for his family, was sent alone to a Christian shelter in Michigan, where authorities temporarily lost track of him. 

Another, a 12-year-old Venezuelan boy with asthma, was detained with his family in St. Paul and sent to Dilley without his inhaler after, a habeas corpus petition alleges, “bounty hunters acting as agents of ICE” raided the home. While in detention, he woke in the night screaming.

“These are horror stories that these children are forced to live through that also reverberate in the hearts and minds of every parent and every child that worries if this could happen to them, too,” Glenn said. “The unavoidable conclusion is that the fear is the purpose.”

Detained at a routine check-in, sent to the border

On a Friday morning in March, a pigtailed 2-year-old girl toddled energetically around her Burnsville apartment, playing with a pink-encased tablet and drawing on a reporter’s notebook with blue crayon. 

Alina, who was born in Panama, does not yet speak — she receives regular speech therapy and early childhood special education services, and her parents are having her screened for autism — so she cannot verbally express what she remembers about being detained.

But her mother, Angel, believes the experience left a mark.

“I imagine she was stressed, because if I felt stressed,” she said in Spanish, “for a little girl I think it’s worse.”

Sahan Journal is using pseudonyms for the family due to fears of retaliation in their immigration case.

Angel, her partner Jesús, and their daughter Alina had all gone to the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program offices in Bloomington for routine appointments. This third-party supervision program monitors immigrants through tactics like ankle monitors, mandatory weekly photo, and regular in-person check-ins.

When Angel was called, they told her to give the baby to her partner, Jesús. But just at that moment, Jesús was called, too. Angel brought Alina with her.

Jesús’ appointment went smoothly and quickly. But Angel and Alina did not reappear. They’d been detained. 

Angel tried to understand what she had done wrong. She and Jesús had both been careful to follow every instruction from immigration officials to the letter.

“I felt my heart racing and a lump in my throat, but I didn’t cry,” Angel recalled. “I swallowed my tears.” She wanted to make sure the baby did not see her upset.

Angel told the ICE agents about the specialized therapy sessions and medical care Alina receives every week. “But it didn’t matter to them,” she said.

She was allowed one phone call to Jesús and told him to call their lawyer, Heinz. She and Alina were detained briefly at the Whipple Building before being flown to San Antonio. By the time they got to Texas, Heinz had filed a habeas corpus petition and a federal judge had ruled that neither Alina nor Angel could be moved out of Minnesota — and that ICE must immediately return them if they’d moved them out of state.

Upon arriving in Texas, Angel was allowed another phone call to Jesús, who was “astonished” to learn she was in San Antonio. He told her about the judge’s order. Angel explained the developments to immigration officials. They told her they wouldn’t deport her, but they didn’t send her back immediately either. Instead, they planned to transfer her to McAllen, Texas, the following day.

They also explained the rationale for their detention: that she had missed a court date. But Angel knew she had not missed a court date, and that her lawyer, Heinz, would not have allowed it to happen. Heinz confirmed that the family had not missed any court dates.

“It was their excuse,” Jesús said.

By now, it was late on a Friday. ICE agents put Angel and Alina in a cold room of a San Antonio detention center with mattresses, but no blankets. It was impossible to sleep. Angel did her best to cover Alina with her jacket. The room was filled with detainees, some of them screaming.

“They weren’t the best conditions,” she said. “But what could we do?”

The next day, immigration officials drove Angel and Alina to McAllen, near the border, where they put them in a hotel. They had their own room — with two ICE agents assigned to them. One stayed at the door, barring any exit, while the other was stationed on the sofa. The agents provided them with food, diapers, wet wipes, and clothing if Alina dirtied something. They also allowed Alina to watch as much TV as she liked, a relief to Angel, who’d been struggling to keep the baby entertained through a plane ride, a night in the detention center, and a road trip to McAllen.

“They were very attentive, very kind, I’m not going to lie,” Angel said.

Still, the mother and daughter could not leave their room. Angel felt self-conscious changing Alina’s diaper in front of the ICE agents. She changed her in the bathroom to give her child as much privacy as possible. And being confined to a hotel room, isolated from the world, proved challenging for Alina, whose therapists have noted her high hyperactivity levels and diagnosed her with ADHD. Angel noticed her daughter standing by the room’s small window for long periods of time, looking at the outside world.

“We had a TV, but she was locked up all the time,” Angel said. “So it was tough.”

“If detention is intense and significant enough for an adult, you can imagine what it’s like for a child who is used to running around, who is used to jumping, who needs her space,” Jesús said.

Angel and Alina spent Saturday and Sunday nights in the hotel, unable to call Jesús. On Monday, the agents told her she’d be returning home to Minnesota. A judge had granted their habeas corpus petitions.

On the plane ride back to Minnesota, Angel again noticed Alina looking out the window.

“When she saw from afar those little houses white from the snow, it seemed to me she sensed exactly where she was,” Angel said. “She came and grabbed her jacket and put it on, like she knew she had arrived.”

The first night home, Alina whimpered through the night. She woke up scared a few nights after that. But her sleeping seems to have returned to normal. Alina’s therapists have advised Angel and Jesús on how to support their daughter after such an experience: keep her entertained so she doesn’t dwell on what happened, and provide reassurance when she wakes up scared in the night. Her parents hope providing emotional support now will reduce the likelihood of trauma later.

Jesús questions why his partner and child were detained, instead of the criminals Trump promised to prioritize. He hopes that in the future the government will avoid detentions like these. He knows his family’s case is not unique, and that other children suffered worse treatment in detention.

“Thank God they released them, and that the treatment wasn’t bad,” Jesús said. “But you are deprived of your liberty all the same. You have no opportunity to feel free.”

At least four other Minnesota children were detained during ISAP appointments, according to a Sahan Journal review of habeas corpus petitions. Since not all detained children had a habeas petition, the actual number could be higher.

Teens detained alone sent to Michigan

It’s not clear what happened to the five teen boys who, as of March 10, remained in federal custody with no publicly listed location. But they may have wound up in Christian youth shelters in Michigan, as did two other teen boys whose lawyers spoke with Sahan Journal.

The two Christian social services organizations — Bethany Christian Services and Samaritas — declined to answer questions about how many Minnesota children detained in the surge were still in their care. 

“Bethany cannot confirm or deny the placement of any individual youth,” Bethany said in a statement. “When children are in our care, our focus is on their safety, well-being, and access to trauma-informed support while we follow all federal requirements related to family contact and reunification.”

Samaritas also said it could not share information about its clients, citing confidentiality and safety concerns.

Glenn represented a 16-year-old, Sebastian, who was detained when he left his Minneapolis home on a Friday night in January to pick up dinner for his family. Sahan Journal is identifying him by his middle name to protect his privacy.

Detained alone, he was deemed an “unaccompanied minor,” a term usually reserved for minors who cross the border without a parent or guardian, and transferred into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement — a separate government agency.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not answer questions about the detained teens sent to Michigan.

“ICE was claiming that they did not even have custody of him for a week that it took before we could even find him,” Glenn said. “It was an absolutely terrifying experience for him and his father, and particularly for his father, who didn’t know if his son was in the government’s custody or if he’d been kidnapped by people impersonating ICE agents.”

After being detained briefly at the Whipple Building, Sebastian, like Angel and Alina, was transferred to a hotel. 

Glenn said she believed ICE kept children in hotels because of the lack of the juvenile detention facilities in Minnesota.

“Sebastian was forced to sleep in a hotel room, not knowing where he was going to be brought, with these ICE agents watching him the entire time,” she said. “It’s just very creepy.”

Sebastian was then transferred to a group home in Michigan run by Bethany. A social worker called his father, saying his son was safe, but provided scant contact information or any way to verify what he was saying. Though a judge quickly ordered ICE to disclose Sebastian’s whereabouts and facilitate communication with his family and lawyer, this did not happen for days, Glenn said.

Being in the shelter was “very scary” for Sebastian, Glenn said. Though the conditions weren’t bad and his basic needs were met, he had no access to education and was bored — entertaining himself with just a television and two other teenagers he met there. But they’d both been there for a long time — and the adults at the shelter warned him that reunification with his family would be a lengthy process.

“It was just incredibly scary to not know when you’re going to have access to your family again, whether you’ll ever be able to live with them again or return home,” Glenn said.

Sebastian was released after 10 days in detention. Glenn drove to Michigan to pick him up.

She worries that the experience of being detained will cause lifelong trauma for her minor clients.

“The impacts extend far beyond that period of detention,” she said. “That kind of trauma of being separated from your family and your parents especially, that’s stuff that stays with you forever.”

Minneapolis attorney Shana Drengenberg represented another teenager in a similar situation. Like Sebastian, her client was a 16-year-old Minneapolis resident from Ecuador. He was detained alone and sent to Samaritas. 

As in Sebastian’s case, the fact that he was being held out of state by a different government agency “created significant logistical complications” in returning him, according to court filings. He was released after nine days in custody — and a full week after a federal judge ordered his return.

Drengenberg, citing concerns for her client’s privacy, declined to discuss his case in detail. But she described the situation as one of “ICE creating their own problems”: unnecessarily detaining a teenager, realizing they had nowhere in Minnesota to put him, and transferring him to another government agency — which complicated his release.

“It, to me, was a signal that they’re really just grabbing anyone off the street,” she said. “They’re not checking in any way to make sure that it’s a proper thing to do.”

Detaining children alone meant taking them away from their families, she said.

“They’re missing school, they’re missing key life moments in a crucially developmental time in their lives. And it’s traumatizing, because no matter what happens to them after they’re in detention, the process of being detained is violent,” she said. “How will this affect him for the rest of his life, knowing that he was treated this way by the United States government?”

Glenn reflected on the experiences of her two detained minor clients: Sebastian, detained alone, and the 12-year-old with asthma detained with his family.

“These cases together show we shouldn’t be detaining children,” she said. “Whether it’s with their family or without their family, it’s horribly traumatic.”