Minnesota Republicans ask Kristi Noem to limit ICE activity near schools

Two days later, some of those same legislators voted down a Democratic bill that aimed to impose similar limits.

The Feb. 16 letter from Republican House education committee leaders — Reps. Ron Kresha, R-Little Falls; Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea; Ben Bakeberg, R-Jordan; and Patricia Mueller, R-Austin — asked Noem to spell out limits on enforcement activities at bus stops and locations for extracurricular activities. The legislators also stressed that immigration enforcement involving schools should happen only when there is a clear threat to public safety.

“We would ask during this transition to normal immigration enforcement activities, you clarify limitations on enforcement actions in areas that are generally considered by the public to be extensions of public schools, such as locations for extracurricular activities, and school transportation, including regular school bus stops for picking up and dropping off students,” the legislators wrote.

The legislators continued: “To the extent practicable, if an enforcement action relating to school personnel is necessary, that action should take place off and away from school property and children.”

In an interview this week, Mueller told Sahan Journal she signed the letter to Noem to protect schools as a place of learning.

“I want to make sure that our schools are not used as political pawns, to make sure that immigration enforcement is done, as much as possible, off of school grounds,” the co-vice chair of the House Education Policy Committee said.

Rep. Sydney Jordan, DFL-Minneapolis, questioned why the Republican representatives who authored the letter did not support her bill to limit ICE enforcement near schools. 

“What they’re asking for, they had the opportunity to make law in Minnesota, and they voted against it,” she said. She noted that in an evenly divided House, she needed just one Republican vote to advance the bill out of committee. While the letter was an encouraging sign that Republicans were open to conversation, she said, she had not heard from any who were interested in advancing her bill.

Kresha and Bennett were not available for interviews. Bakeberg did not respond to interview requests. 

For decades, schools were deemed “sensitive areas” where the federal government agreed to limit immigration enforcement activity. That changed on the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term, when the Department of Homeland Security rescinded the policy. 

The new policy left enforcement at sensitive locations to agents’ discretion.

In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said it was a “false narrative” that ICE was targeting schools, hospitals or churches.

“ICE is not going to schools to arrest children — we are protecting children,” Tricia McLaughlin, who served as assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Homeland Security until late February, said in a statement last month. Asked for comment this week, DHS sent the same statement. “Criminals are no longer able to hide in America’s schools to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense. If a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee, there may be a situation where an arrest is made to protect public safety. But this has not happened.”

But immigration agents’ activities near schools became a major flashpoint during Operation Metro Surge, when 4,000 federal agents descended on Minnesota. Images of Border Patrol agents firing chemical weapons at students on the grounds of Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis went viral. St. Paul and Anoka-Hennepin school districts both reported that ICE had pulled over vans transporting students. Several suburban districts said that ICE had used their parking lots to stage immigration raids. A parent was detained while dropping off their child at a school bus stop in Crystal. And in Columbia Heights, at least seven students were detained, including 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, apprehended wearing a blue bunny hat.

The Republican letter is one of several Minnesota efforts to keep ICE away from schools in the wake of Operation Metro Surge. School districts in Fridley and Duluth, along with Education Minnesota, the largest educators union in the state, sued the Department of Homeland Security on Feb. 4, claiming that rescinding the sensitive areas policy was illegal. That case is scheduled for its first hearing in April. Jordan has proposed a bill aimed at keeping ICE out of schools. And Congressional Democrats are pushing for restrictions on ICE activities near schools in negotiations over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Brenda Lewis, the superintendent of Fridley Public Schools, which saw sustained ICE activity near school buildings in the height of Operation Metro Surge, told Sahan Journal she was “so encouraged” by the Republicans’ letter.

“I have always said from the beginning, this isn’t a Democrat or a Republican issue,” she said. “This is really about children’s safety, and that’s exactly what that letter underscores.”

‘Fear and disruption for students like me’

Bennett, co-chair of the House Education Policy Committee and a Republican candidate for governor, described the letter in a Feb. 18 committee hearing on Jordan’s bill. That bill, HF 3435, would prohibit school employees from allowing agents to access school sites unless they provide valid identification, a written statement of purpose, a valid judicial warrant and permission from the superintendent. 

Bennett said that federal immigration law must be followed and that local jurisdictions should cooperate with federal authorities. She also stressed that the Legislature’s job should be to provide clarity to schools on how to comply with federal law.

“It’s also my belief that federal immigration actions involving schools should be very rare and only with extenuating circumstances addressing a clear threat to public safety or children,” she said, referencing the letter she had sent days before. “It should be a rare occurrence that schools are involved in these situations. It’s my hope that the federal government will adjust their policies.”

Rep. Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, explains her opposition to DFL Rep. Sydney Jordan’s bill that would prevent school staff from allowing immigration agents to access schools. Credit: MN House

Emotional testimony followed. 

Josh Hermerding, a multilingual teacher at Lucy Craft Laney Elementary School in north Minneapolis, described a regular ICE presence outside his school in mid-February — two weeks after the first round of several hundred ICE and Border Patrol agents left Minnesota. Agents circle the school until 8:45 a.m., he said.

“Four times as of yesterday ICE has been found by school staff illegally using our school parking lot to stage operations,” he said. “Fourteen days in a row ICE has been found staging within two blocks of the school during [the] arrival of families, including today.” 

Hermerding said he alerted neighbors and administration if he saw agents “because ICE has demonstrated their lack of empathy toward children while conducting operations across Minneapolis.” Only four out of 35 students were attending his class in person in mid-February.

“All families, regardless of citizenship, are sheltering in place,” he said. “ICE targets you based on the color of your skin and what language you speak on the North Side, and our neighborhood runs hot with agents.”

Christoph Dundas, a band teacher in Austin Public Schools, said he hoped to share the mood from a diverse rural area. ICE agents had been regularly spotted in Austin during Operation Metro Surge, and many students were staying home in fear, he said. He shared a story of two students, U.S. citizens with no criminal record, who were arrested by ICE.

“They were picked up for no reason other than the way they look and the language that they were speaking outside,” he said. “It is no wonder that parents and community members have been telling me that they are afraid to have their students go to school. Parents continue to say that they want their children in school, but they are afraid of what will happen when students walk to or from school, or in the minutes when parents are waiting to pick them up.”

A DHS spokesperson said that without the names of the Austin students, the agency could not verify whether they were detained.

Emily, a student who did not share her last name, said that the day before the hearing, on Feb. 17, she was in a vehicle stopped by ICE on her way home from school. She feared for someone else in the car and felt shaken for a long time after the interaction.

“Experiences like that affect young people and how they move throughout the world,” Emily said. “And what worries me the most is the idea of something like this happening at school. Schools are supposed to be places where students feel safe, where we focus on learning, friendships and our own future. The enforcement actions that continue to happen near or at schools are causing fear and disruption for students like me.”

After members of the public testified, legislators discussed the bill. Rep. Alex Falconer, DFL-Eden Prairie, said that he believed ICE had been targeting schools.

“In my district, with Eden Prairie and Minnetonka, every single day ICE agents are stalking school buses and intimidating parents and kids,” he said.

Falconer shared an experience in which he’d been watching a school bus stop and witnessed an encounter at the next stop. Four agents had jumped out of a car, thrown a woman to the ground and handcuffed her in front of her child, he recounted. When they picked her up, her nose was bleeding. They shoved her into a car.

“All the while she’s screaming, I’m legal, I have my papers, let me go, let me take care of my kid,” he said. “And her daughter [is] screaming for her mom.”

Students at Roosevelt High School walk out in protest ICE presence in Minneapolis on Jan 12, 2026. Credit: Chris Juhn for Sahan Journal

Bennett thanked the testifiers, particularly the students like Emily.

“We have passionate people, and I hear the fears,” she said. “But we need to be honest about what this bill will actually do to solve the situations that we’re hearing.”

No one had testified about ICE agents inside schools, Bennett said. Testifiers had spoken about seeing them across the street from schools, in apartment buildings and in communities.

“The fear, I totally understand that,” she said. “But we have to understand that in our education purview here, we’re just about what’s happening in our schools and what we can do about that, and this bill is not going to solve that problem. What will solve the problem is if our state and local governments will cooperate so that we can get ICE off the streets, out of the communities, away from across the street from our schools, and picking up these criminal illegal immigrants at the jails.”

The bill failed to advance on a tied party-line vote. Republicans on the committee, including Bennett and Mueller, all voted no.

One goal, many approaches

Jordan, the bill’s chief House author, said she had not known about the Republicans’ letter until Sahan Journal sent her a copy. 

“Letters are one thing, but our votes are real action that Minnesota schools are demanding, and they’re acknowledging that Minnesota schools want this and our students need this,” she said. “So it’s curious to me.”

Even if the Trump administration reinstated the sensitive areas policy, Jordan said, her bill would still be needed.

“I think our schools are too important,” she said. “We need laws to protect our students, because clearly, the Trump administration doesn’t follow their policies.”

Jordan noted that the Senate companion to her bill had not hit any partisan hurdles. In a Feb. 25 Senate Education Policy Committee hearing, all legislators present, Democrats and Republicans, voted to advance the bill. (Sen. Zach Duckworth, R-Lakeville, was absent.)

Mueller said she voted against Jordan’s bill because the Legislature does not have power over the federal government.

“I agree with them that there should not be federal immigration enforcement at our schools,” she said. “However, this is a federal immigration issue, and the only fix that can come, and the best protection that we can give our students, is for the president to reverse his executive order and put our schools back on the sensitive spaces list. That’s the only fix that can happen here.” 

Mueller said she believed that both immigrants and immigration agents should follow the law.

“I want to keep both sides accountable,” she said. “I want to make sure those who are criminals here and are not here legally, that they’re held accountable. And I want to make sure that our federal immigration enforcement, that they are also held accountable.”

Mueller described Austin, the diverse rural area she represents, as a place where “we as a community have really embraced our brothers and sisters from other countries.” Austin is home to two meatpacking plants that have attracted many immigrant workers. She praised the Austin school board for communicating clearly with families the steps that they were taking to keep children safe.

“We are trying to do everything we can to help each other out and be the community that we can, and then also making sure that we are holding people accountable when we need to,” she said.

Lewis, the Fridley superintendent, became one of the most outspoken Minnesota superintendents about federal immigration activity after weeks of monitoring ICE vehicles near Fridley schools. She said she was pleased to report that she hadn’t had an ICE sighting near her schools since Feb. 5.

Still, she said, the district was pursuing as many solutions as possible to make sure that ICE stayed away from schools. 

“We need protection so that it never, ever happens again,” she said.

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