Posters are displayed in windows at Valley View Elementary School in suburban Minneapolis. Immigration authorities have detained seven children from Columbia Heights Public Schools to date, a spokesperson said. (Kerem Yücel/Minnesota Public Radio/AP)
The elementary school principal in suburban Minneapolis feared the worst when he lost contact with one of his fifth-grade students in early January as the Trump administration began surging federal immigration officers to the area.
The girl stopped coming to class and her family didn't answer the phone, said Jason Kuhlman, who oversees Valley View Elementary School in Columbia Heights. The family's landlord went to the house but found no one, Kuhlman said. The girl's school-issued Chromebook laptop was still there.
It took a month, and a chance encounter more than 1,000 miles away, for Kuhlman to learn that the missing girl, along with her family, was being held by immigration authorities in a Texas detention center. Two of her Valley View classmates -- brothers in second grade and fifth grade who had also been sent to Texas with their mother -- recognized her in the detention center cafeteria, Kuhlman said.
The boys told Kuhlman about the girl after they and their mother were released on a judge's order and returned to Minnesota on Wednesday, he said. The school district declined to share the names of the students.
"It was surreal," Kuhlman told The Washington Post. "It was like, 'Are you kidding me?' I wonder ... how many kids are MIA?"
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the department cannot verify the detention of the students without their names. "No one in ICE custody is missing" as detainees are searchable online and can contact their families by phone, she said, and ICE does not target children or schools.
"Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates," McLaughlin said. "This is consistent with past administration's immigration enforcement."
Columbia Heights Public Schools announced the discovery of the missing girl Wednesday as scrutiny grows over the detention of children by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the Minneapolis area. Images of ICE agents detaining a 5-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, and his father in late January drew outrage and prompted Democrats in Congress to lobby for his release.
Immigration authorities have detained seven children from Columbia Heights Public Schools to date, including Ramos, according to district spokesperson Kristen Stuenkel. (The district has approximately 3,300 students.) They range in age from 5 to 17, according to the district. Five have been released, and the district said it believes two are still in custody -- one at Dilley and one in an unknown location.
The surge of immigration agents to Minneapolis and surrounding cities has cratered school attendance, said Kuhlman, who likened the disruption to the covid pandemic. As federal agents sweep through neighborhoods to make detentions, tracking down families who have gone silent has become a harrowing challenge for school staff, he said.
"It's hard to know if they've been abducted or if they're just in hiding," Kuhlman said.
On Jan. 29, Kuhlman brought two Valley View students -- the brothers in second and fifth grade -- to the Whipple federal building in Minneapolis to be reunited with their mother after she was detained by federal agents, he said. Kuhlman said the family had an active asylum case, but they were detained and transferred to a detention center in Dilley, Texas.
The Dilley facility has held other detainees from the Minneapolis area, including Ramos, the 5-year-old. And it was there, in the detention center cafeteria, that the two Valley View boys found their classmate, the missing fifth-grade girl, with her family, Kuhlman said.
A judge ordered the two boys and their mother released on Jan. 30, according to court documents. They returned to Minneapolis on Wednesday, where Kuhlman picked them up. In the back seat, the boys told Kuhlman and another school staff member that they spotted their classmate in detention.
"Both our heads snapped back," Kuhlman said. "I'm like, 'Well, there we go, we found our missing student.'"
Kuhlman said he did not know how the fifth-grade girl and her family had been detained. School staff had searched for the girl on ICE's lookup for detainees but did not find her, he said. The school district has since been able to connect the girl's family with legal representation.
Valley View's staff has now turned their attention to another family who has gone silent. Kuhlman said he planned to knock on their door Thursday.