After the ICE detention of a 5-year-old boy makes national headlines, Superintendent Zena Stenvik of Columbia Heights School District in Minnesota shares in a Jan. 22 press conference that "over the last few weeks, ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots multiple times, and taking our kids." 

In a Jan. 21 incident, ICE agents entered a high school parking lot for approximately 10 minutes and left after staff members, including school administrators, asked agents if "they had any business there," said Stenvik. Students witnessed the interaction through school windows, said Mary Granlund, the district's school board chair, during the press conference. 

Stenvik said that four of the district's students "have been apprehended and taken away by masked and armed ICE agents with no identifying badges." She added that the "onslaught of ICE activity in our community is inducing trauma and is taking a toll on our children, taking a toll on our families, our staff, our community members."

Federal officials apprehend a school employee in a parking lot at Concord Education Center, a special education school managed by Intermediate School District 917, which  offers alternative learning services for nine Minnesota public school districts located in the south Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. The incident took place after an apparent collision with a federal vehicle and allegedly involved ICE smashing educator Christina Rank's car window, per her mother's account, and detaining Rank for 12 hours, according to local reporting by Pioneer Press. 

DHS said in a statement to Snopes that "a U.S. citizen pulled up next to the agents, asked if they were ICE, and began honking her horn and yelling 'you are terrorists.'" Then, DHS said, Rank followed law enforcement officers in her vehicle after ICE left the parking lot, got "dangerously" close to them, and collided with their vehicle after trying to intercept their vehicle.  "The woman refused and disobeyed commands. ICE officers followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to make the arrest," said DHS in its statement. The agency added that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "has been clear: Anyone who actively obstructs or impedes law enforcement will be prosecuted." 

Onlookers and Rank's mother dispute DHS' claim that the educator rammed into a federal vehicle, saying instead that ICE hit the educator's car.

Officials at Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis Public Schools say officers from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which is also a branch of DHS, came onto school property during dismissal time and tackled people, handcuffed two staff members, and deployed chemical weapons on bystanders, according to Minnesota Public Radio. The bystanders included high school teachers, administrators and students, according to a lawsuit filed Jan. 12 by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison against DHS and ICE seeking to curb immigration operations in the state. 

MPS said in a Jan. 8 statement it was "aware of an incident that happened after school yesterday outside of Roosevelt High School" that "involved federal law enforcement agents." 

In response to the incident and the same-day fatal shooting of activist Renee Good by an ICE agent just a few miles away, MPS canceled classes "out of an abundance of caution" and then offered virtual school to families when classes resumed on Jan. 12. The cancellations impacted about 100 schools and 30,000 students and also led to field trips planned for Minneapolis being called off, according to the state's lawsuit.

A teacher is detained by immigration agents at the Rayito de Sol Spanish Immersion Early Learning Center in Chicago. The employee was detained at the school entrance, although accounts of the specifics differ. According to a DHS statement, ICE targeted a Colombian immigrant "and attempted to pull her vehicle over," after which she and the car’s driver attempted "to barricade themselves inside of the daycare center." 

But Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., said in a Nov. 5 video statement that "ICE broke into the day care and took a day care teacher while children were in that day care. They didn't just take her — they went back in and went into other rooms asking teachers for papers while children were inside." Ramirez said the facility was "broken into by these masked agents with guns running through the day care." 

At least one ICE agent enters the parks in the lot of Thomas Kelly College Preparatory, a high school in the Chicago Public Schools system. School staff informed the agent, who was parked in the lot briefly during the morning, that he had to leave the property, and he did so "right away" and "without any hesitation" said Francisco Perez, a security staff member at the school. The officer did not detain anybody and left without incident. 

A 15-year-old high school student with disabilities is apprehended at Los Angeles' Arleta High School at gunpoint, in what a LAUSD board member called "an alleged case of mistaken identity." During the incident, DHS agents allegedly pulled the boy from a car while his sibling completed school registration nearby and handcuffed him in front of his mother while refusing to look at their identification, according to a December report on ICE activity released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. 

Court documents in an Oregon lawsuit describe “a violent ICE enforcement action" in mid-July on the grounds of a private early childhood education center.  The incident included ICE agents allegedly shattering the window of a car belonging to a 2-year-old student's father and detaining the father while he was dropping off his child. Following the incident, Oregon’s Guidepost Montessori School saw a drop in student attendance and in interest from new families, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against DHS claim.

Immigration enforcement officers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security attempt to enter two Los Angeles Unified School District elementary schools — Russell Elementary School and Lillian Street Elementary School — but are denied entry by school administrators. DHS said agents were in search of students as part of “wellness checks on children who arrived unaccompanied at the border” and told K-12 Dive this had "nothing to do with immigration enforcement." 

DHS said the officers left “without incident” after school leaders refused to share information on the children without a court order or warrant. However, two U.S. senators from California alleged later that month that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents lied in their attempts to enter the buildings by saying they had permission from the students’ families to speak with the children.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.