NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Every day at 4:30 p.m., Brenda Lewis checks her phone for an updated count. It’s the time of day when she hopes to breathe a sigh of relief. And in our 33-minute conversation, that moment when she glances at her phone is the only time her eyes light up.
“It was a good day,” she says after glancing at her phone. “No one was snatched on school district property, and no one was killed.”
Lewis is the superintendent of Fridley Public Schools, located in a Twin Cities suburb of Minnesota, a hotbed for immigration enforcement after the Trump administration in the early weeks of 2026 escalated “Operation Metro Surge,” using aggressive tactics that led to federal agents killing civilians Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
In those weeks, Fridley Public Schools — alongside other Minnesota schools — saw a surge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity on or near school grounds and bus stops, according to Lewis, other area superintendents and accounts in court documents.
She describes federal agents in vans following her and school board members — one of whom had a 3-year-old child in the car — for hours on end, and agents in vehicles sitting outside of the homes of at least three board members all day. In another incident she recounted, six ICE vehicles circled an elementary school during arrival hours, driving up and down the road and preventing elementary students from using a crosswalk. Two of those vehicles, she said, followed a mother — who she says is legally in this country — and her child to school.
“Everything has changed,” Lewis says.
District leaders say immigration policy changes under the Trump administration and the resulting ICE activities on or around school grounds has had districtwide impacts, from the classroom to district offices.
ICE activities sweeping through communities has led to online learning or school lockdowns, loss of instructional time and a fractured sense of safety for both students and staff.
It has also triggered student absences, as a result of students being sent to immigration detention facilities and families choosing to stay home out of fear, relocate to areas less affected by ICE activities or to leave the country altogether. Consequently, districts are facing the loss of millions in funding, superintendents say.
These events have made schools a key part of the debate over nationwide crackdown on immigration.
This far-reaching fallout is pushing superintendents like Lewis to mobilize against the administration’s immigration policies through letters, lawsuits and other means. But in doing so, some also walk a tightrope — facing dissent from their own fissured communities, receiving death threats, and in some cases alleged harassment from federal agents.
Meanwhile, a congressional stalemate fueled by disagreements over ICE tactics, including those used on or near school grounds, continues to stall funding for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Posters memorializing Renee Good and Alex Pretti are seen on the wall of a building on Feb. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images via Getty Images
Weapons, drones and handcuffs
Shortly after President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2025, DHS changed its long-standing policy to allow immigration enforcement on previously protected locations, including school grounds and bus stops.
In the year-plus since that change, firsthand accounts from superintendents as well as legal filings show that ICE has frequently patrolled school areas, including using drones to look inside a school building and photograph staff. Agents have also apprehended parents during pick-up and drop-off hours, and in some cases tailed school employees and students.
DHS told K-12 Dive in June that enforcement on school grounds would be “extremely rare,” and said in a later September statement that “ICE is not conducting enforcement operations at, or ‘raiding,’ schools.”
Tricia McLaughlin, then DHS assistant secretary of public affairs, said in a statement at the time that “ICE is not going to schools to make arrests of children.” McLaughlin, who has since resigned, clarified that ICE may enter school grounds and make an arrest “if a dangerous illegal alien felon were to flee into a school, or a child sex offender is working as an employee.”
However, the scope of actual ICE activity has varied in nature, extent and location.
A K-12 Dive tracker of incidents shows at least seven incidents in January alone where ICE entered school property, including an incident where ICE used a school parking lot as a staging area — or where agents gather to prepare for enforcement.
In one incident at a Los Angeles Unified School District school, federal agents detained a high school student with disabilities, putting him in handcuffs and drawing a gun on him during course registration hours. Nearby in El Rancho Unified School District, an incident caught on tape last year shows 10 ICE vehicles pulling into an elementary school parking lot and at least 10 agents urinating on school grounds.
Even when not directly on school grounds, ICE activity has created a climate of fear that disrupts their school environments, superintendents say.
A superintendent from a district in Los Angeles County — who spoke to K-12 Dive on a condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from federal agents — described ICE officers with weapons sitting across from an elementary school. There have been many reported examples contained in lawsuits and local media of parents, and sometimes even students who are with them, being detained on their way to or from school.
In one such incident, a parent and child in Columbia Heights, Minn., were detained on their way to school and sent to a detention facility in Texas where they were held for a month before being released in February, according to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
And school transportation vans carrying students were also pulled over by ICE agents in Minnesota, according to reports cited in court documents.
At the core of educators’ concerns: As a result of ICE activity and agents’ reported behavior, they can no longer ensure the safety and education of the children they serve —despite being required to do so under various local policies and laws.
Lawsuits filed as educators worry about sense of safety
That concern has appeared multiple times in educators’ lawsuits aiming to curb immigration enforcement on or around school grounds.
“To begin with, I knew that part of my job could involve protecting my kids from someone with a gun,” one educator in Arkansas says as part of a Feb. 13 emergency motion filed in PCUN v. Noem. “Now, in addition to that, I have to worry that there might be masked federal agents about to swarm in with guns, too.”
The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers joined that lawsuit in September, and it was originally filed in April 2025 by organizations in Oregon, including a Latinx farmworker labor union.
Fridley Public Schools — Lewis’ district — and one other Minnesota district, Duluth Public Schools, also filed a lawsuit earlier this month alongside their educators union, Education Minnesota. It’s one of the first lawsuits filed by districts since ICE activity surged in Minnesota the past few months.
“For us, it’s simply about frustration, exhaustion and desperation,” Lewis says. “Our district was under assault and so at that point anything was helpful.” On Feb. 23, Lewis and other plaintiffs sought an emergency motion to end ICE activities on school grounds immediately while the lawsuit is pending.
In times of crisis — whether it’s ICE activity, extreme weather or a pandemic — schools often serve as resource hubs for their communities, providing food, legal guidance and even shelter. At the same time, residents look to schools for a sense of safety, security and leadership.
“School leaders end up being the part of our community that’s consistent,” says David Law, superintendent of Minnetonka Schools in Minnesota. Now, however, the sense of safety that schools and their leaders provide has been compromised, he says.
“The thing people wanted us to say was: ‘We’ve got this.’ And we couldn’t say that.”
In addition to ICE operating near or around school grounds, the role of local law enforcement — who are tasked with keeping schools safe — seems to have shifted in some cases because of federal immigration activity.
In Fridley, unmarked law enforcement cars on school grounds now raise alarm bells, Lewis says, so she requested that the local police department inform her before coming on or near school grounds.
Superintendent Brenda Lewis posted signs designating the school grounds of Fridley Public Schools in Minnesota, as a “student safety zone” in response to heightened immigration enforcement.
Permission granted by Brenda Lewis/Fridley Public Schools
Law says he has also had to contend with parent activists who are tailing school buses in an effort to keep children safe, only to spook children and families who worry they’re being followed.
Still, schools have sought avenues to make their students safer amid ICE activities.
The Los Angeles County district superintendent who spoke to K-12 Dive on condition of anonymity said her district chose to bus high school students who would typically walk to and from school. Staff there and in other districts are escorting students to bus stops or helping pay families’ rent.
In Fridley Public Schools, 400 of the district’s more than 2,700 students opted for online learning during the height of enforcement in Minnesota, according to Lewis. The district is also collaborating with local leaders to help students locate family members who Lewis says are often found in detention centers in Texas.
Also during that period, Lewis spent four hours a day patrolling her schools’ grounds. “When I go into patrols at schools, I have 6-years-olds saying to me, ‘Are you the lady that fights ICE?”‘
Superintendent John Magas estimates Duluth Public Schools has spent 30-50% of its administrative time over the course of the last two months on communications related to ICE and preparing for scenarios such as enforcement during field trips or football games and other after-school activities.
As districts expend and adjust resources to stave off impacts on students and staff from ICE activities, however, they also face financial blowback from increased student absences as a result of fear, students taken to detention centers, families taking flight to areas they consider safer for them, and immigrant students no longer entering school systems.
John Magas, superintendent of Duluth Public Schools in Minnesota, attends a conference in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 12-14, 2026, hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, where he and other superintendents discuss immigration enforcement affecting their districts.
Naaz Modan/K-12 Dive
Enrollment, attendance, newcomer students: ‘A dead zone’
In New York’s Uniondale Union Free School District, newcomer ambassadors used to be a welcoming face — giving school tours to students recently arrived in the U.S., showing them how to take the bus, and explaining to immigrant parents who to call if their child is out sick.
Now, the newcomer ambassadors make food deliveries to families too afraid to leave their homes. When children cry out of fear their family members will be deported, they offer a shoulder for comfort. In between it all, they help parents draw up emergency plans and prepare legal forms in case ICE separates them from their children.
“Its not about giving tours anymore,” says Estrella Olivares-Orellana, director of multilingual learners at the Long Island district, who oversees the newcomer ambassador program. “It has now become a first responder position for families who aren’t sending children to school because of ICE.”
Estrella Olivares-Orellana, director of multilingual learners at the Uniondale Union Free School District in New York, drives a food delivery van to parents in the district who are facing food insecurity as a result of ICE enforcement.
Permission granted by Estrella Olivares-Orellana/Uniondale Union Free School District
Where Uniondale’s admissions office welcoming newcomer students would previously be bustling throughout the year, it now mostly sits empty.
“With the really heavy emphasis on immigration enforcement efforts, what we’ve seen is less families are coming into the district,” says Monique Darrisaw-Akil, superintendent of Uniondale Union Free School District. “It has become a dead zone.”
The district welcomed 187 English learner students in 2024. That number dropped to only 28 in 2025.
Overall, the district has lost about 500 students, Darrisaw-Akil says. With per-pupil funding for 2026-27 at a little over $11,000, that many fewer students equals a $5.7 million funding loss for the district.
“There’s an immediate financial impact,” says Law. Under Minnesota statute, districts lose education funding for every student that is absent more than 15 days during the school year.
In Law’s Minnesota district, some students have been out for weeks or months at a time. Overall, Law says, the district has some 600 fewer kids than at the start of immigration enforcement. He estimates one student brings $14,000 into the district per calendar year, so a 600-student dip means a loss of about $4.2 million — or the salaries of 40 staff — if those students were to be absent half the year.
Nearby in Fridley, Lewis says the district has 112 fewer students, some of whom are in immigration detention. Fridley Schools’ attendance rate dropped by nearly one-third during the ICE surge, according to its lawsuit filed in February.
Officials in Fridley and other districts say these drops are atypical compared to their usual enrollment fluctuations and absence numbers.
“That is hundreds of thousands of dollars in pupil funding — over a million dollars for the entire year,” Lewis says. “For any district, that’s a huge hit.”
Superintendent Monique Darrisaw-Akil of Uniondale Union Free School District, located in New York, attends a conference in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 12-14 hosted by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, where she spoke about the importance of advocating for the safety of her students, who have been impacted by ICE operations.
Naaz Modan/K-12 Dive
Superintendents respond to the ‘imperative’
Ask superintendents whether their jobs are political, and you will get an overwhelming ‘yes.’
They routinely advocate for increased funding or better facilities before local and state lawmakers, balance relations with their school board on one hand and community members on the other, and implement ever-evolving state and federal policies.
For many superintendents, it’s a no-brainer to speak out against conditions they believe are both threatening students’ safety and draining school resources.
Some say speaking out against recent ICE enforcement is also a moral issue — especially after the deaths of Pretti and Good — while others don’t want to wade into that debate.
“All of us have an imperative to stand up,” says Law.
On Feb. 11, AASA, The School Superintendents Association, sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to include provisions in fiscal year 2026 appropriations that would prohibit DHS from conducting immigration enforcement on or near school grounds and reinstate the decades-long protections for schools.
It urged lawmakers to include in Fiscal Year 2026 legislation provisions that would prohibit DHS from conducting immigration enforcement on or near school grounds and reinstate the decades-long protections for schools that the Trump administration overturned.
As part of its 2026 agenda, AASA’s legislative committee on Feb. 11 also made it a policy priority to have schools reinstated as protected areas from ICE activities.
“Superintendents across the country felt the need to respond to the disruptive and traumatic effects of immigration enforcement activities on and around school campuses,” says Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for AASA.
Similar to AASA’s efforts, several pending lawsuits also seek to have the 2025 DHS policy that exposed schools to immigration enforcement struck down as unlawful. The suing districts hope to overturn the policy and reinstate protections for schools nationwide rather than just in their districts.
Some superintendents have also written federal agencies requesting responses to situations unfurling in their districts.
California’s El Rancho Unified School District, where at least 10 agents were captured on security footage video urinating on school grounds, requested an investigation from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE in a July 2 letter.
Months later, amid Operation Metro Surge, Lewis requested meetings with Border Czar Thomas Homan over activity in Fridley Public Schools. While he initially accepted, she says, the meeting kept getting delayed and was eventually canceled. She also sought meetings with Noem and Trump but says those requests were met with radio silence.
Noem is expected to leave the agency by the end of the month after being fired by Trump, who announced her departure in a March 4 social media post.
After suing DHS in what she describes as a last-ditch effort, Lewis says ICE’s aggression near or around school grounds escalated and included harassment of school administrators. In one incident she related, she says ICE agents drove by a school with the windows rolled down while yelling and taking photos of school staff.
She eventually took to social media and spoke to the press whenever an ICE-related incident occurred.
“You do something, we do something,” she says.
Work begins underground
For others, the work has been underground.
After hearing of Lewis’ experience, the Los Angeles County superintendent who spoke with K-12 Dive on the condition of anonymity says she wanted to “bring about change” but worried she would put a target on her students’ backs by speaking out publicly.
She says she depends on bigger districts in the area, like Los Angeles Unified School District, to be more vocal, saying that superintendents with more resources and connections are more insulated from blowback.
In Uniondale Union Free School District, Darrisaw-Akil says, employees now avoid advertising events on social media that would be attended by immigrant families, opting to send flyers home with students instead.
On Feb. 13, Law hosted a webinar with other superintendents, closed to the press, to discuss ICE’s impact and strategies to contend with them. Some attendees remained anonymous even among each other in sharing stories.
As superintendents mobilize, many say their communities have been grateful — for the most part. In some instances, community members have reacted in a way that has added to their challenges, they say.
“You have to balance an administration that says if you’re standing up, you’re harboring criminals,” says Law, who is in a city he describes as politically purple. A message that he sent out to his school community at the request of his school board triggered two opposing responses from parents: “You’re cowardly,” and “Why are you taking a stance on immigration enforcement?”
Concerns reach lawmakers
Superintendents’ concerns have reached the ears of lawmakers, some of whom have stalled funding DHS until reforms curbing ICE tactics are included in the bill.
Sen. Klobuchar visited schools in Duluth on Feb. 6, after Duluth and Fridley schools sued DHS. She said in a press conference the same day that she met with many educators who shared Duluth’s concerns.
“Schools across our state and places across our state are seeing that ICE in this case is not making us more safe, it’s making us less safe,” she said.
In their demands for the FY 2026 DHS funding bill, Democrats are seeking protections for sensitive locations, including schools — which they described as “common sense reforms” — be reinstated, according to a Feb. 4 letter sent to Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York.
Duluth Public Schools Superintendent John Magas (left) speaks at a roundtable next to U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (middle), who heard from Magas an education leaders in February 2026 about how ICE operations are impacting schools.
Permission granted by Patty Paquette/Duluth Public Schools
The message and the groundwork
Amid those funding negotiations and Minnesota contending with two citizens’ deaths at the hands of federal officers, the Trump administration announced it was ending operations in the state about a week after the Duluth and Fridley lawsuit was filed.
But Lewis still checks her phone daily.
Feb. 26 marked three weeks since there was an ICE-involved incident on or around school grounds in Fridley Public Schools, according to her count. Toward the end of February, Lewis made what she anticipates will be her final school patrol, which previously lasted up to 4 hours daily.
“It’s asinine right?” she says. “That is not normal for a superintendent to benchmark as a successful day.”
The district will now look toward recovery, but expects that to take years. To begin, it will have to invest in more mental health support and step up its tutoring support, she says. Meanwhile, some families that fled may never return, meaning the district will likely have less funding for those additional efforts.
And though ICE activity has seemingly slowed in Minnesota, the emergency motion in the districts’ lawsuit says enforcement near or around school grounds has continued. It’s also unknown where ICE will pick up operations next, after operating in California, Illinois, Oregon and Maine in the last year.
In Duluth Public Schools, Magas says that’s part of the reason why the plaintiffs in his lawsuit are moving forward with their legal challenge even though Operation Metro Surge has ended.
“We need to stand up for our neighbors here in Minnesota and likewise, even if the immigration enforcement moves on in a different state,” he says. “We want to make sure we’ve laid the groundwork to make a change for what’s right.”
Going forward, many other districts will likely have to weigh how they want to contend with ICE, based on their own community and district circumstances, and some may consider joining his or other lawsuits, Magas says
“I think the time for a strongly worded letter is coming to an end.”
DHS funding lapsed and the agency began a temporary shut down less than 24 hours after K-12 Dive spoke with Lewis, as a result of Democratic lawmakers’ refusal to make a deal without policy reform. In a March 4 vote, Senate Democrats for the second time blocked DHS funding after lawmakers failed to come to an agreement over accountability measures for federal immigration enforcement.
For lawmakers, the Trump administration, and their own communities, superintendents like Lewis have a message: “My role is not immigration policy or immigration reform,” she says. “It’s point-blank a safe, academic and welcoming environment — and ICE has upended that in my district and other districts.”
