Zena Stenvik | Columbia Heights Superintendent: How ICE Is Endangering Children

My name is Zena Stenvik. I serve as the superintendent for Columbia Heights Public Schools in Minnesota. I'm here today to discuss the deep impacts of Operation Metro Surge by ICE. We had very heavy ICE presence in and around our school buildings on a daily basis, oftentimes at arrival or dismissal time when children were trying to come to and from school. 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, very often no license plates whatsoever. And so there was definitely a heightened sense of instability and fear among all of our students and our staff, frankly, and community members. Community members began being apprehended. Overall, we've had seven of our students detained, and six of whom were swiftly taken to the detention center in Dilley, Texas. This daily presence and just knowing that children were losing their classmates, many students, 800 of our 3,400 students, moved to online learning. And so children were either sequestered in their homes or they were in school but losing their friends. To be honest, it was really eerie walking the halls of the schools during that time. You know, a bustling high school that typically was very quiet in the hallways. So it had an impact really on every single student in our district, whether they were a child who was detained, a child who was on their way to school blocked in by three unmarked cars, or the children who were sequestered at home for months and months on end without being able to leave their homes. We are absolutely seeing trauma responses coming from our children right now. I don't toss around the word trauma lightly. Children are very resilient. Trauma impacts people in very different ways, but we're seeing very significant impacts of this trauma. Even some of our youngest children who have come back from Dilley, Texas, they'll be in their second grade classroom, for example, and when it's time to go to art class or when it's time to go to lunch, it's really triggering for them. The child themselves expresses, I'm afraid to leave my classroom or I'm afraid to leave my teacher. Those transitions have been really hard. Recently we had a tornado drill and children were asking, are we sheltering because of ice? Or the social workers report to me being outside with children and if there's an SUV present or anyone in a uniform, the children are afraid and ask, is that ice? Is ice coming? So it's this instinctual triggering that's happening on a day in and day out. When children are impacted in that manner, it's really the, the survival instincts kick in much more than the learning, right? So we've always tried to keep throughout this whole process or this whole crisis, we've tried to keep learning happening and as much of a normal school day going as possible, whether that was in person or online. I think it's really important to understand that the families that I have been working with, so families who have been detained would send us their immigration paperwork so that we could help work with our U.S. representatives, Ilhan Omar, our senators, Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar to seek their help, right? And every family that I worked with were here in this country by legal means. I saw their alien numbers. I saw their court dates, their check-in dates. So they were here by legal means and that means that this was not an operation targeting violent criminals. They would stage on a corner or in some parking lot. They tried to stage in our school parking lots, which we would not allow. You know, it was almost like just fishing. This is racially motivated, racial profiling. Anyone come driving by who fit the profile of being black or brown, it was almost like fishing, reeling people in. Take the example of our little five-year-old eight armed, masked men in fatigues, unmarked vehicles surrounding them. That became our daily life when, you know, kids are just trying to get to and from school or parents are just trying to go to the store. Again, people here by legal means, just trying to live their lives, go to work and be a productive citizen in this country, were being apprehended for seemingly no reason at all except for racial profiling.