Just hours after a U.S. ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident who wasn’t even a target of the enforcement action, federal agents showed up near Roosevelt High — three miles from the shooting site. That killing has ignited outrage citywide, with local leaders rejecting the federal “self-defense” claim and demanding accountability.
What happened next is what forced schools to close. According to unions and eyewitness accounts, U.S. Border Patrol agents ended up at Roosevelt High School just as students were leaving.
They didn’t cordon off a street or provide cover — they stormed the vicinity, tackled people, used pepper spray or irritants on bystanders including students, and detained at least one school staff member in front of children.
One special education assistant — a U.S. citizen, a school employee — was taken to a federal building and only released late that night, according to the Minneapolis Federation of Educators.
Parents, teachers, and students described a scene that should never happen: adults in classrooms already worried about the morning’s deadly federal shooting finding themselves watched by kids as masked agents dragged and cuffed staff and sprayed chemicals on crowds.
Think about the moral horror of this: schools are supposed to be sanctuaries, protected spaces where children are safe from armed authority, not watched helplessly as that authority snatches teachers like they’re criminals.
Families were forced to pick up their kids early. Educators were called off the job. Classrooms — places of learning and refuge — stood empty.
And all of this happened in the context of a federal enforcement surge that brought roughly 2,000 agents into Minneapolis, heightening tensions and making every street corner a potential flashpoint.
What’s happening in Minneapolis is deliberate: a concentrated federal surge turning Minnesota into a proving ground for aggressive immigration enforcement.
That isn’t care. That isn’t protection. That’s harm — inflicted by the very people entrusted with enforcing the law. And now, as families pick up the pieces, the question is not whether this moment will be investigated — it’s whether we will let it become normal.
No child should ever witness a teacher being cuffed at school. No district should ever close because federal agents turned a classroom into a battleground. That’s not safety — that’s terror.
