Childcare Professionals, Lawmakers, and Parents Weigh In On Heightened ICE Presence in Minneapolis

 

Minnesota Women’s Press attended a news conference three days after Minneapolis resident Renee Good was killed by Jonathan Ross, a federal ICE agent. The meeting was hosted by Kids Count on Us — an initiative of ISAIAH and a coalition of 500 community-based childcare centers across Minnesota — to give voice to people’s concerns surrounding ICE agents’ targeting of Minnesota childcare centers. 

Speakers included two House representatives who are members of the Children and Families Committee in the Minnesota House, as well as local childcare professionals and parents. 

The first speaker was Shauna, a childcare provider and parent, who began by emphasizing how all parents and families are collectively impacted by the concerted efforts by ICE against childcare facilities. “I do this work because children are our most vulnerable population,” she said. “Raising our children takes a lot of energy, both from parents and caregivers, and now the federal government is adding on top of that the layers of immigration or citizenship status that make people even more vulnerable, especially our kids.” 

Shauna highlighted the fact that many of the kids she works with will one day go to Roosevelt High School, which ICE agents targeted in a raid hours after Good was killed. “I watched in anger and horror as ICE agents tackled our youth to the ground and tear gassed them at school. It feels like we are in one long, perpetual active-shooter drill. 

“I don’t want this for our children. None of us want to have to do this. I want ICE to leave us alone, so that the kiddo who looked at her mom at pick-up the other day and asked, “Why do you have a whistle?,” can go back to being a kid, and her mom can go back to thinking about what’s for dinner instead of what they will do if they see ICE along the way [home].”

State representative Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, who represents most of Eden Prairie in district 49B, co-chairs the House’s Children and Families Committee. She said, as the mother of four, people trying to parent today “are just trying to raise our kids to be safe, kind, and responsible humans, but at the same time, we are trying to protect them under a Republican regime that is rapidly destroying our democracy. My Democratic House colleagues and I are in the community, on the streets, working with our neighbors to protect people. Many families are afraid to send their kids to school because ICE is staking out our bus stops. Restaurants in my community are closing because their employees are at risk of being kidnapped during their daily commute. Whether or not we agree on policy is one thing, but the President ran a campaign on America first, and said this was about getting criminals off the streets. Now, American citizens are being killed in broad daylight, and students are being tackled after school. None of this is about public safety.”

She added that ICE is destabilizing communities and making us all less safe. This isn’t just happening in Minneapolis. It’s happening in the suburbs. It is potentially spreading statewide. We, as Minnesotans, are just trying to live our lives while masked agents are coming in, arresting people without cause, racially profiling our neighbors, and generally wreaking havoc.” 

The Twin Cities area has in a short time suffered from the murder of George Floyd by police, the murder of Melissa Hortman and her husband by a political operator, and a school shooting a few months ago. “Having another murder, one that is clearly on video for the world to see, is unbelievably difficult,” said Kotyza-Witthuhn. “The fact that this ICE escalation is due in part to some of our Republican colleagues inviting an amateur videographer to come here and target Somali-run child care and early learning centers is heartbreaking.”

Hillary, a parent, said the stress of the last two weeks broke her during a teacher and staff meeting, when she “sobbed with relief seeing these groups of people choosing to protect our kids and our neighbors and community members. It was also when I finally allowed myself to feel the devastation of the moment. I was worried all day, about whether my child would be okay. My daughter attends child care at a fantastic Spanish immersion child care center. My husband and I are very white. We deliberately chose Spanish Immersion because we wanted her to learn a second language while her brain is in a ‘sponge mode,’ so she can soak it all in. But importantly, we wanted her to come to know and love people who do not look like us — that she hangs out with people of every color.”

She noted that the White House administration “has decided that terrorizing children and kidnapping teachers at childcare centers is acceptable. It’s not anywhere near acceptable. There are no words to truly describe just how horrific it is, and the trauma it is inflicting on our children and their caregivers.

“My main goal as a mom right now is consistency for our daughter. That means a safe and loving home, and a safe and loving child care environment. Child care providers are still bringing love, but this administration’s actions have taken away all illusions of safety. Consistency is impossible when staff are navigating their own safety.”

She says caregivers are dealing with the stress of not knowing whether they will make it home at night. “When I see them outside of the classroom, to me, it’s clear the level of stress and trauma — they keep this pushed deep down, so the kids don’t see it. It is an amazing kindness I couldn’t possibly ask them to give us, but they do. So the only kindness I can give in return is to use my voice to speak up for them. So let me be clear that I am angry. ICE’s presence here is unnecessary and dangerous, and I’m calling on them to leave. A mother has already been killed.”

Lauren is a childcare provider. “I’m scared, apprehensive, worried, and frustrated —- and angry that any of us have to feel any of those things, because ICE is inflicting them upon us. They want us to believe they are rooting out dangerous criminals. That is a lie. The husband of one of our employees was stopped and searched by ICE with no probable cause.”

She decried the fact that Minnesota representative Lisa Demuth “invited a 23-year old YouTuber to investigate fraud. Hundreds of childcare centers have received countless harassing phone calls filled with racist attacks. We’ve had to write entirely new protocols about if ICE enters our building. …  There is so much uncertainty and fear by design. It’s designed to make us tired, so we don’t fight back. But I’m angry that we are living like this.

“I’m angry that people who look a certain way are in danger of being kidnapped off the street, or from their workplaces or homes. I’m angry that my staff of color are scared, and I’m angry that they have to walk around with their passports. And I’m angry that ICE agents continue to break the law. … They have shown that they are content to murder a mother in front of our very eyes. I’m exhausted, and this is all very heavy, but I will fight back, and our families and teachers will fight back, and our community members will fight back until we get ICE out of Minnesota.”

Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, a member of the House Children and Families Committee, said: “We are talking about really scary things that we wish our young people did not have to know or think about. It has been a heartbreaking week here in Minnesota.”

She said she got to the scene of Renee Good’s murder by an ICE agent shortly after, inside what was “clearly the car of a mom. It was full of all of the things we have in our cars to make sure that we can keep our kids entertained as we are trying to get safely from here to there.”

ICE did not take a rest after her killing before showing up at a local high school to “terrorize students, parents, and community members at dismissal. We saw teachers being taken away. We saw our already traumatized communities struggling to keep each other safe. And let me be clear: ICE’s actions are not making us safe, they are traumatizing our kids.”

Soon after, the Minneapolis school district decided to close for the rest of the week, to keep children safe. “They are having their education cut because of ICE’s actions in our community. Schools, which are already overburdened, are having to pivot to offer students remote learning [for the next month] because so many kids and families are terrified to come to school. The same day that Renee was killed, a beloved teacher at a daycare in our district was abducted by ICE. This comes on the heels of daycare centers across our city being raided, facing death threats … with a business model that is not particularly sustainable.”

Sencer-Mura called for Republican colleagues, calling out Speaker Demuth, “to stop playing political games with our kids. As a result of their actions, Trump has said that he might freeze funding for more than 20,000 children across Minnesota, many of whom live in Republican districts who rely on the child care assistance program. More than 4,000 child care programs across our state serve children on child care assistance. The Trump administration says they are going to freeze that funding, and we have no idea how our already fragile child care system will survive this.”

Sencer-Mura said she has heard reports that family members do not hear for sometimes 48 hours about loved ones who have been detained. She added: “Childcare is the workforce behind the workforce. If we don’t have our childcare vendors, none of us can work. None of us can participate in the economy. I know that we have a president who says that he is good for business, right? Certainly here in Minnesota, his actions have not been good for business. He is hurting our businesses. He is hurting our economy. He is hurting our families.”

She also offered a direct message for ICE agents: “Please stop terrorizing our community. All of you had a mom, many of you, I’m sure, have kids. You are not making us safe, you don’t know how to drive on our streets, and you really don’t know how we in Minnesota love one another”

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