Columbia Heights superintendent says ICE Operation Metro Surge brought armed agents to schools, detained students
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Summary
Superintendent Zena Stenbic told recorded testimony that ICEs Operation Metro Surge brought heavily armed agents near Columbia Heights school buildings, led to seven student detentions (six sent to Dilley, Texas), and triggered trauma that disrupted learning for hundreds of students.
Zena Stenbic, superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools in Minnesota, said in recorded testimony that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Operation Metro Surge brought a daily, heavily armed ICE presence to and around district school buildings and led to the detention of seven students, six of whom were taken to a detention center in Dilley, Texas.
"These weren't typical law enforcement officers that we're used to interacting with in our community. These were heavily armed, fatigued, masked agents, oftentimes in unmarked cars or fully blacked out cars," Stenbic said, describing agents she said sometimes had no license plates and created a "heightened sense of instability and fear" among students, staff and families.
Stenbic told the record that the daily presence and arrests prompted about 800 of the district's roughly 3,400 students to move to online learning. "It had an impact really on every single student in our district," she said, and added that social workers reported children asking whether an SUV or a uniform meant ICE was coming.
The superintendent said seven students had been detained and that six were "swiftly taken to the detention center in Dilley, Texas." She said families provided immigration paperwork and court dates to district staff and that the families she worked with were "here in this country by legal means." Stenbic said she and district staff worked with Representative Ilhan Omar and Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar to seek help for affected families.
Stenbic described behavioral and learning impacts she attributed to trauma from the enforcement presence. "When children are impacted in that manner, it's really the...survival instincts kick in much more than the learning," she said, noting that even young children who returned from detention exhibited triggers in routine classroom activities.
She characterized the operation as relying on racial profiling. "This is racially motivated profiling," she said, and recounted an incident involving a 5-year-old, identified in her testimony as Liam Conejo Ramos, who was surrounded by armed, masked men in fatigues.
The testimony does not include statements from ICE or other law enforcement agencies, and no formal action or vote is recorded in the transcript. Stenbic framed her remarks as a report of the district's experience and the harms she said followed, and she said families sought assistance from federal lawmakers. The record ends with her reiteration that routine life, work and schooling were disrupted for people she said were present in the United States by legal means.
