Dive Brief:
- A federal judge has denied two Minnesota school districts' request to temporarily stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity on school grounds in a lawsuit that ultimately seeks to overturn a Trump administration policy allowing such enforcement.
- Duluth Public Schools and Fridley Public Schools filed the lawsuit in February in response to federal Operation Metro Surge, which led to a reported increase in ICE activity on or around school grounds in Minnesota.
- U.S. District Judge Laura Provinzino, however, said on May 6 that the administration's 2025 guidance undoing protections for schools and other sensitive locations "did not change DHS’s ability or authority to engage in enforcement activity at or near protected areas."
Dive Insight:
"What has changed, evidently, is DHS’s willingness — not its authority — to conduct immigration enforcement activity at or near protected areas like schools," Provinzino said in the decision. "But such immigration enforcement has always been subject to DHS’s judgment and discretion, even under the 2021 Guidance."
Since protections for sensitive locations such as schools were first introduced in 1993, "such enforcement actions were never categorically prohibited, even if they were discouraged as a matter of internal policy," said Provinzino.
Fridley and Duluth public schools filed suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection in February after multiple reported ICE incidents on or around the districts' property earlier in the year that included federal agents allegedly stationed outside elementary schools.
In Fridley, for example, the lawsuit stated that DHS agents staged enforcement operations in the parking lots of at least two district school buildings and that agents "followed Fridley Schools leadership, including its superintendent and school board members.”
ICE activity has also impacted districts outside of Minnesota.
In an April example, an out-of-town police chief and one additional individual, both in a marked law enforcement car wearing police uniforms, went to three school campuses at Cincinnati Public Schools in Cincinnati, Ohio to conduct "wellness checks" on children.
"It is true that the prior guidance discouraged such activity and laid out specific guidelines for how and under what circumstances DHS would engage in, and who could authorize, such enforcement activity," said Provinzino in the decision. "Those guidelines are what most clearly differ between the 2025 Guidance and the prior guidance."
School leaders, including in other districts, have said the 2025 guidance issued under President Donald Trump overturning immigration enforcement protections for sensitive locations have made ICE activities more common on or around school grounds. They also say the policy instilled fear and anxiety in students and their families, leading to decreases in attendance.
Though the lawsuit was filed in Minnesota, school leaders had hoped to halt the increased ICE activity on school grounds nationwide.
Last week's decision denies those districts a preliminary injunction, meaning that while a final decision in the case could still ultimately block the administration's 2025 policy, the court is not temporarily pausing the policy as the case proceeds in court.
"The Trump-Vance administration’s decision to allow immigration enforcement at and around schools has disrupted classrooms, driven families away, and created an environment of fear that no child should have to endure," said plaintiffs, including the two Minnesota districts and educators' union Education Minnesota, in a joint May 6 statement. "While the court declined to immediately stop that activity, this is not the end of our fight."
