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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In certain respects, 10-year-old Giancarlo considers himself fortunate. Unlike many, he continues attending school.
Every morning, Giancarlo’s family layers on their warm clothes and steps out of their Minneapolis home to catch his school bus. His younger brother, though no longer attending daycare due to his mother’s concerns, still straps on his backpack.
While waiting by an iron fence, Giancarlo’s mother gathers the boys under a tree’s shade to pray, the only moment she pauses from anxiously watching for immigration agents.
For numerous immigrant families across Minnesota, entrusting a child to school buses involves a leap of faith—hoping federal immigration officers stationed statewide won’t target them. Many children remain homebound, hindered by either a lack of direct transportation or a deep-seated mistrust.
These fears are not unfounded. In several cases, parents and even children have faced detention. Among them is 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who, along with his father from Ecuador, was apprehended in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, while returning from school. They were transported to a detention center in Texas but eventually released following a judge’s intervention.
Schools, parents and community groups have mobilized to help students get to class so they can learn, socialize and have steady access to meals. And for those who are still sending their children, the trip to and from school is one of the only risks they’re willing to take.
“I don’t feel safe with him going to school,” Giancarlo’s mother said, shaking her head. “But every day he wakes up and wants to go. He wants to be with his friends.”
School remains a haven in a time of tumult
Giancarlo’s Minneapolis elementary school is the best thing going for him these days. There’s soccer to play at recess. The recorder to learn. Giancarlo has set his eyes on learning the flute next year when fifth graders choose an instrument. He has “demasiado” — “too many” — best friends to name.
But his mother and brother’s home confinement weighs on him. He saves half the food he gets at school breakfast and lunch to share with them, and he’s lost four pounds this year. He takes extra care to bring pizza or hamburgers, treats the family used to eat in restaurants when his mom, an asylum-seeker from Latin America, was still working and they felt safe leaving the house. Giancarlo has also applied for asylum and his brother, Yair, has U.S. citizenship.
Sometimes only seven of Giancarlo’s classmates show up when there should be close to 30. “The teachers cry,” he said. “It’s sad.”
With as many as 3,000 federal officers roaming the state this year, some immigrant parents have made a bet that their children are safer riding or walking with white Minnesotans who were strangers just weeks ago — rather than in their own cars or while holding their hands.
One mother, an immigrant from Mexico, has given up her housecleaning job, and her husband stopped going to his construction job to minimize their chances of being detained. Her 10-year-old, U.S.-born daughter is the only one leaving the house, getting a ride with another student’s parents to her private Christian school in Minneapolis.
“It raises my blood pressure,” the mother said. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being targeted by immigration authorities.
Absenteeism has soared across schools in the Twin Cities area
Under longstanding guidance that was thrown out by the Trump administration, schools and other “sensitive places” such as hospitals and churches previously were considered off-limits for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other immigration officials. Children, no matter their immigration status, have a constitutional right to attend public school.
This winter, school absenteeism and the demand for online learning have surged as immigration officers showed up in school parking lots.
In St. Paul, over 9,000 students were absent on Jan. 14, more than a quarter of the 33,000-student district, according to data obtained by the AP. In Fridley, a Minneapolis suburb, school attendance has dropped by nearly a third, according to a lawsuit the district filed this week trying to block immigration enforcement operations near schools.
Kids sent letters to St. Paul Superintendent Stacie Stanley begging her to offer online learning. Her voice shook as she read a letter from an elementary school student: “I don’t feel safe coming to school because of ICE.”
When the district introduced a temporary virtual learning option, over 3,500 students enrolled in the first 90 minutes. That number has since risen to more than 7,500 students.
An escort from school — and assurance for a small girl
After school on Wednesday, around 20 teachers and a retired principal packed into the front office at Valley View Elementary School — where Liam Conejo Ramos attends prekindergarten — for a briefing before walking home children who live nearby. School officials say several other students and over two dozen parents have been detained.
“We live in a place where ICE is everywhere,” said Rene Argueta, the school’s family liaison. Argueta, himself an immigrant from El Salvador, organized the teachers walking and driving students to and from their homes.
The day before, the group had run into federal officers in the neighborhood at dismissal time. Argueta felt it necessary to calm some of the teachers upset by the encounter.
“Your only goal is to bring the students home, no matter what you see,” he told the group. “We don’t approach ICE. We don’t take out our phones.”
After distributing walkie-talkies, Argueta and two other teachers met a group of 12 kids waiting for them in the hallway. Argueta took the hand of the youngest child, a boy in prekindergarten, and led the group outside.
Toward the back of the line, second grade teacher Jenna Scott chatted with a former student, now a third grader. She tried to keep the conversation light.
“I’m so excited to see your house,” Scott told her.
“Have you signed up for parent-teacher conference?”
“No, miss. ICE,” the girl said.
“I know. Tell your parents you can do it online this time.”
The third grader then ran to her home. Afterward, Scott said the 10-minute walk is a delicate dance. “You don’t want to scare the kids, but you also want them to walk quickly.”
The day before, Argueta said, they were walking the students home when they heard cars honking to warn that immigration agents were nearby. One little girl who was walking ahead started to panic and ran back toward Argueta.
“ICE viene,” or “ICE is coming,” she yelled.
He took her hand and kept walking. She asked if he was afraid.
No, he said.
She asked if he had papers, if he was in the country legally. Argueta has a green card and permission to work, but he lied. He told her he didn’t, so she wouldn’t feel alone.
Her hand relaxed in his. She smiled again.
He held her hand until they got to her doorstep and she went inside with her mother.
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