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MINNEAPOLIS — For weeks, administrators at this charter high school have arrived an hour before class, grabbed neon vests and walkie-talkies, and headed out into the cold to watch for ICE agents and escort students in.
Lately, fewer than half of the 800 sudents show up.
“Operation Metro Surge,” the immigration crackdown in Minnesota that led to nationwide protests after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, has had students, parents and teachers on edge regardless of their immigration status.
Signs of a fearful new normal are all over the school. Green craft paper covers the bottom of many first-floor windows so outsiders can’t peer in. A notice taped outside one door says unauthorized entry is prohibited: “This includes all federal law enforcement personnel and activities unless authorized by lawful written direction from appropriate school officials or a valid court order.”
Students at a Minneapolis high school classroom with many empty seats on Jan. 29, 2026.
Staff coordinate throughout the day with a neighborhood watch group to determine whether ICE agents are nearby. When they are, classroom doors are locked and hallways emptied until staff announce “all clear.”
Similar tactics have been utilized by schools in other cities hit by immigration raids across the country. The Los Angeles Unified School District established a donation fund for affected families and created security perimeters around schools last summer.
But it appears nowhere have students felt the repercussions of local raids more than in Minneapolis.
Many schools have seen attendance plummet by double-digit percentages. At least three other, smaller charter schools in Minneapolis have completely shut down in-person learning.
At this high school, which administrators asked The Times not to identify for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration, 84% of students are Latino and 12% are Black. Staff and students are being identified by first or middle names.
A balloon sits in a hallway at the high school.
Doors and windows are covered at the school so outsiders can’t see in.
Three students have been detained — and later released — in recent weeks. Two others were followed into the school parking lot and questioned about their immigration status. Several have parents who were deported or who self-deported. Latino staff said they have also been stopped and questioned about their legal status.
“Our families feel hunted,” said Noelle, the school district’s executive director.
Students returned from winter break on Jan. 6, the same day 2,000 additional immigration agents were dispatched to Minneapolis to carry out what Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons called the agency’s “largest immigration operation ever.” The next day, an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.
“I describe that day as if you’re on an airplane and it’s really bad turbulence, and you have to keep your cool because, if you don’t, you lose the entire building,” said Emmanuel, an assistant principal. “It felt like we went through war.”
Attendance dropped by the hundreds as parents grew too afraid to let their children leave home. School leaders decided to offer online learning and scrambled to find enough laptops and mobile hotspots for the many students who didn’t have devices or internet. Some teachers sent packets of schoolwork to students by mail.
A teacher at the Minneapolis high school that administrators asked The Times not to identify for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. Teachers and students there also asked not to be identified.
Noelle said in-person attendance, which had dropped below 400 students, increased by around 100 in the third week of January. Then federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, and attendance plummeted again.
Rochelle Van Dijk, vice president of Great MN Schools, a nonprofit supporting schools that serve a majority of students of color, said many schools have redirected tens of thousands of dollars away from other critical needs toward online learning, food distribution and safety planning. For students still attending in person, recess has frequently been canceled, and field trips and after-school activities paused.
Even if students return to school by mid-February, Van Dijk said, they will have missed 20% of their instructional days for the year.
“A senior who can’t meet with their college counselor right now just missed support needed for major January college application deadlines. Or a second-grader with a speech delay who is supposed to be in an active in-person intervention may lose a critical window of brain plasticity,” she said. “It is not dissimilar to what our nation’s children faced during COVID, but entirely avoidable.”
At the high school, administrators said they tried to create “a security bubble,” operating under protocols more typical of active shooter emergencies.
Gym class at the Minneapolis school, where many students are so afraid of ICE that they won’t go to the campus.
If agents were to enter the building without a judicial warrant, the school would go into a full lockdown, turning off lights, staying silent and moving out of sight. That hasn’t happened, though ICE last year rescinded a policy that had barred arrests at so-called sensitive locations, including schools.
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said that blaming ICE for low school attendance is “creating a climate of fear and smearing law enforcement.”
“ICE does not target schools,” McLaughlin said. “If a dangerous or violent illegal criminal 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 the safety of the student. But this has not happened.”
Alondra, a 16-year-old junior who was born in the U.S., was arrested after school Jan. 21 near a clinic where she had gone with a friend, also 16, to pick up medication for her grandmother.
She said that as she was about to turn into the parking lot, another car sped in front of her, forcing her to stop. Alondra saw four men in ski masks with guns get out. Scared, she put her car in reverse. Before she could move, she said, another vehicle pulled up and struck her car from behind.
Alondra shared videos with The Times that she recorded from the scene. She said agents cracked her passenger window in an attempt to get in.
“We’re with you!” a bystander can be heard telling her in the video as others blow emergency whistles.
She said she rolled her window down and an agent asked to see her ID. She gave him her license and U.S. passport.
“Is it necessary to have to talk to you or can I talk to an actual cop?” she asks in the video. “Can I talk to an actual cop from here?”
“We are law enforcement,” the agent replies. “What are they gonna do?”
In another video, an agent questions Alondra’s friend about the whereabouts of his parents. Another agent is heard saying Alondra had put her car in reverse.
“We’re underage,” she tells him. “We’re scared.”
A sign directs students to line up for their school bus route. Bus pickups are staggered, with one group of students escorted outside at a time. This way, the children can be taken back inside the school or onto the bus more easily if ICE arrives.
A Minneapolis Public Radio reporter at the scene said agents appeared to have rear-ended Alondra’s car. But Alondra said an agent claimed she had caused the accident.
“It’s just a simple accident, you know what I mean?” he says in the video. “We’re not gonna get on you for trying to hit us or something.”
“Can you let us go, please?” her friend, visibly shaken, asks the agent at his window.
Alondra and her friend were handcuffed and placed in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle as observers filmed the incident. At least two observers were arrested as agents deployed tear gas and pepper spray, according to an MPR report.
The agents took the students to the federal Whipple Building. Alondra said the agents separated the friends, looked through and photographed her belongings and had her change into blue canvas shoes before chaining her feet together and placing her in a holding cell alone.
“I asked at least five times if I could let my guardian know what was happening, because I was underage, but they never let me,” she said.
Finally, around 7 p.m., agents released Alondra — with no paperwork about the incident — and she called her aunt to pick her up. Her friend was released later.
Meanwhile, school administrators who saw the MPR video called Alondra’s family and her friend’s.
Alondra said officers didn’t know what had happened to her car and told her they would call her when she could pick it up. But no one has called, and school administrators who helped her make calls to Minneapolis impound lots haven’t been able to locate it either.
Though Alondra could attend classes online, she felt she had to return to campus.
“I feel like if I would have stayed home, it would have gone worse for me,” she said, her lip quivering. “I use school as a distraction.”
The backstage of the auditorium, dubbed the bodega, has been turned into a well-stocked pantry for families who are too afraid to leave their homes.
A volunteer organizes donated items for distribution to families at the Minneapolis high school.
A teacher makes a delivery to a family in Minneapolis.
Teachers and volunteers sort donations by category, including hygiene goods, breakfast cereals, bread and tortillas, fruit and vegetables, diapers and other baby items. Bags are labeled with each student’s name and address and filled with the items their family has requested. After school, teachers deliver the items to the students’ homes.
Noelle said some students, particularly those who are homeless, are now at risk of failing because they’re in “survival mode.” Their learning is stagnating, she said.
“A lot of these kids are — I mean, they want to be — college-bound,” Noelle said. “How do you compete [for admission] with the best applicants if you’re online right now and doing one touch-point a day with one teacher because that’s all the technology that you have?”
On Thursday afternoon, 20 of 44 students had shown up for an AP world history class where the whiteboard prompt asked, “Why might some people resort to violent resistance rather than peaceful protest?”
Upstairs, in an 11th-grade U.S. history class, attendance was even worse — four students, with 17 others following online. The topic was what the teacher called the nation’s “first immigration ban,” the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Students head to their bus at the high school.
Morgan, the teacher, asked the students to name a similarity between the Chinese exclusion era and current day.
“Immigrants getting thrown out,” one student offered.
“Once they leave, they can’t come back,” said another.
“The fact that this is our first ban on immigration also sets a precedent that this stuff can happen over and over and over again,” Morgan said.
Sophie, who teachers English language learners, led the effort to organize the online school option. She is from Chile and says she has struggled to put her own fear aside to be present for the students who rely on her. Driving to school scares her, too.
“It’s lawless,” she said. “It doesn’t matter that I have my passport in my purse. The minute I open my mouth, they’re going to know that I’m not from here.”
Sophie said she once had to call a student’s mother to say her husband had been taken by immigration agents after another school staffer found his car abandoned on a nearby street.
“Having to have that conversation wasn’t on my bingo card for that day, or any day,” she said. “Having to say that we have proof that your husband was taken and hearing that woman crying and couldn’t talk, and I’m like, what do I say now?”
Close to the 4:15 p.m. dismissal, administrators again donned their neon vests and logged on to the neighborhood Signal call for possible immigration activity.
Students walk to a bus Thursday. Dismissal used to be a free-for-all, with large numbers of students rushing outside as soon as the bell rang.
Dismissal used to be a free-for-all — once the final bell rang, students would rush outside to find their bus or ride or to begin the walk home.
Now pickups are staggered, with students escorted outside one bus at a time. Teachers grab numbered signs and tell students to line up according to their route. If ICE agents pull up, administrators said, they could rush a smaller group of students onto the bus or back inside.
In yet another example of how the immigration raids had crippled attendance, some buses were nearly empty. On one bus, just two students hopped on.
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Andrea Castillo
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