“Could you put your phone away?” Bethel University alumnus Kaden Lamb asked his eighth-grade student.
Instead of obeying, his student waved him over and showed him the video he had just received of his aunt and cousins being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I’ve got to try to look at the kid and tell him to sit down and do the classwork that we’re doing,” Lamb said. “When, in reality, his family is being stripped from their homes, and the people that he saw when he left for school won’t be back when he comes home.”
Lamb graduated from Bethel University in 2023 with a degree in Communication Arts and Literature Education 5-12. He has taught eighth-grade English at Fridley Middle School for the past year.
Bethel education graduates across the metro area have felt tensions rise in their schools since the United States Department of Homeland Security began “Operation Metro Surge” in the Twin Cities and surrounding areas. 3,000 ICE agents have been deployed to Minnesota during the surge, detaining thousands of people.
Several Minnesota school districts, including Fridley Public Schools, are currently offering a virtual learning option for students who don’t feel safe attending school in person due to increased ICE activity in the area. Out of the 95 students he teaches, Lamb said he has about 15-20 students who haven’t attended school in person for the past month. At school, staff and community members stand guard around the building, especially before and after school during bus and parent drop-off times.
“It’s heavy, and it’s high stress,” Lamb said. “It’s hard to have to be not only the students’ instructor and caretaker in the building, but also [their] emotional steadiness and security. Teachers aren’t trained to be a security guard.”
In Columbia Heights, Valley View Elementary School made national news after one of its students, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, was detained by federal agents on the way home from school. 64% of the school’s students are Hispanic/Latino, according to the Minnesota Department of Education. Teegan Johnson, who graduated from Bethel in 2023 with an elementary education degree, has taught fourth grade at Valley View since graduating.
The elementary school has organized grocery deliveries for families afraid to go out, groups of teachers to walk students to and from school each day and an online curriculum option. Although she tries to keep her students’ routines as normal as possible, Johnson said she’s had many honest conversations with her fourth graders about what’s happening.
“These kids are 10, and we’re talking about people dying in our morning meetings,” she said.
Bethel graduate Lexie Knutson teaches kindergarten at a charter school in the Twin Cities with over 90% Somali students. The school, which requested not to be named, held an emergency meeting at the beginning of “Operation Metro Surge” to go over safety procedures. She finds herself on high alert all the time — watching to ensure each of her kids comes in the classroom door, and being aware of her surroundings when she takes them to the bus.
“You’re not prepared to have a different kind of lockdown, specifically because your children’s lives are at risk for existing in the race or ethnicity that they are,” she said.
Respect Djunga graduated from Bethel in 2025 with a Reconciliation Studies degree. He now works as a literacy interventionist for Reading Partners, a nonprofit organization that provides individualized tutoring to students to raise reading proficiency in schools. Djunga tutors K-5 students at Folwell Community School in Minneapolis.
One day, Djunga was talking with a fourth-grade student about her weekend plans. He asked if she was going to go outside and play with her friends like usual.
She looked him in the eyes. “I can’t go outside,” she said. “ICE is going to get me.”
“It gave realness to the situation we find ourselves in,” Djunga said. “Imagining this fourth grader, who’s 10, 11 years old, having fear to go outside and play. That’s not normal.”
At the kindergarten level, many of Knutson’s students often don’t fully understand what’s happening, but they come to her with questions about what they overheard on the news or from their family. She teared up when recalling one of the first conversations.
“If my mom gets taken, and so do we, do I still get to come see you?” her student had asked her.
However, after that question, Knutson’s student continued talking about her favorite color.
“They’re just like every other kid you’ve ever met,” Johnson said. “They like to play soccer, and they like to play Roblox and they just want to be friends with everyone, but they’re scared, and they’re worried.”
Keeping routine
Djunga said the Reading Partners program has seen a significant decrease in attendance over the past few months, which makes it difficult to help students who are below their grade’s reading level. About 53% of students at Folwell Elementary are English language learners, according to the Department of Education.
“It’s very sad, because these are children who began school during COVID,” he said. “So you have students who, in some sense, have missed two to three years of core development in regards to learning.”
Although Minnesota is currently pushing for increased literacy rates through the 2023 Minnesota Reading to Ensure Academic Development (READ) Act, Lamb said it’s difficult to improve literacy when teachers can’t have students in class.
In his educational psychology classes at Bethel, Lamb learned that adolescent students can’t learn any information when they’re in a stress response and have high cortisol levels in their brains.
“We already struggle enough to get middle schoolers or young kids out of that stress response and into a place where they feel more comfortable and safe,” he said. “There’s just no space for that right now with all of the high stress and scary things going on in the neighborhood for these kids.”
Johnson, Knutson and Lamb all said one of their goals is to maintain routines and provide consistency for students. Keeping this routine is essential for Knutson’s kindergarten students, who are learning the basics of how to operate in a school setting.
“Their brains are jammed,” she said. “I have plenty of [student] behaviors now that I think definitely stemmed from what’s been happening, or behaviors that were getting better that are now just falling apart.”
Along with struggling students, Lamb said he knows Fridley teachers who cry on their way into school each day, and staff who can’t sleep at night because of the sounds of helicopters circling around their neighborhood and flash bang grenades going off in the streets.
“As much as it’s affecting all the students so heavily, it ends up taking a really big toll on the teachers and the staff members,” he said.
However, Djunga said he’s found encouragement in the way Twin Cities communities have come together.
Parents stand guard on Folwell Elementary sidewalks. Johnson walks her students to and from school. At Fridley Middle School, staff and students collected a huge pile of food, clothes, diapers and cleaning supplies for families in need.
“We got the middle-aged moms posted up on the block trying to be witnesses to injustice,” Djunga said. “That has been something beautiful, and I commend my fellow Minnesotans.”
Additional reporting by Luca Lombardi.
