The Minneapolis immigration crackdown ended months ago. For these little kids, trauma remains

COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, Minn. -- The little girl approached the therapy dog outside the school library, reaching out to touch her fluffy blond coat. Social worker Nicole Herje leaned in.

"How does it feel when you pet Sage?” Herje said.

“I like it," the girl said. “In Ecuador, I had a dog.”

A few months earlier, this girl and many of her classmates at Valley View Elementary were staying off the streets to avoid the immigration officers flooding their suburban Minneapolis community. Attendance plummeted as families kept their kids from school during the Trump administration’s enforcement surge.

Sage the goldendoodle is not just a cute diversion. She's part of a broader strategy to address the psychological wounds of children who witnessed arrests, lost relatives to deportation or endured anxious weeks indoors. At least four students at the school were themselves detained, sent hundreds of miles away to a Texas family detention center.

Immigration officers made more than 4,000 arrests and shot multiple people, two fatally, before “Operation Metro Surge” wound down in February, leaving an imprint on the psyches of young children that could haunt them for years, mental health providers say.

Columbia Heights Public Schools, like many other districts, offered virtual learning for children who remained at home during the crackdown, but online schooling ended after spring break, and with many back in class, the staff has been focused on their recovery.

“What we know about trauma is that our bodies hold on to the fear,” Herje said.

The children logged into Zoom in February from various parts of their homes: in living rooms and bedrooms where the curtains were drawn, beneath a rack of clothing in a closet, on a couch with a Mexican flag pinned on the wall behind. Few of the kindergartners could sit still. One stepped away and did cartwheels.

Fears lingered well after the thousands of immigration officers President Donald Trump deployed to the Twin Cities had come and gone. It did not help that one of their schoolmates, preschooler Liam Conejo Ramos, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement when he arrived home from school, wearing his Spiderman backpack and a bright blue hat with bunny ears.

That’s why, in the middle of their virtual school day, Herje led the kindergartners in a special class on emotions. They shared what made them happy and sad, calm and angry. They talked about missing their classmates and longing to return to school.

“When you’re happy, you laugh and jump and dance and play, and you want to share that feeling with everyone,” Herje said, reading from the children’s book “The Color Monster.” “Anyone want to raise your hand and tell us something that makes you feel happy?”

“When I’m happy, I want to go to school when I see my friends,” said one girl.

Herje followed up: What made them sad?

“When my grandma, she go (to) Ecuador,” another girl said.

All had lived through one of the most aggressive immigration crackdowns in history. There were the masked immigration agents patrolling in SUVs, followed by demonstrators blowing high-pitched whistles. There were the arrests of tearful and screaming immigrants, captured on video and played on endless loops across social media. In many cases, parents were taken away.

A growing body of research is illuminating the impact of trauma on children, even those too young to understand. Prolonged exposure to a high-stress environment can reshape a baby's brain, explained Rebecca Parlakian, the senior director of programs at early childhood advocacy group Zero to Three.

“When a child is experiencing sustained and consistent traumatic experiences where they have lost the sense of basic safety, we see that the brain reorganizes itself for survival, which actually translates to structural anatomical changes in the brain,” Parlakian said.

The symptoms of trauma can vary widely depending on the child, their age and what they’ve witnessed or experienced. Robyn Tabibi, a family physician in St. Paul who often works with expectant parents, said she treated a 3-year-old who had lost several relatives to deportation and had to move homes with his mother to avoid being targeted.

“He gradually stopped eating, became listless, refused to play anymore,” Tabibi said. “He’s in this new space, and he is so traumatized.”

Children from families with no immigration concerns also developed anxiety.

Sarah Anikpo was born in the U.S., and her Liberian-born husband gained citizenship in 2020. So Anikpo, a psychiatric physician assistant, didn't think to discuss the crackdown with their 9-year-old son Zeke, even as helicopters whirled over their South Minneapolis neighborhood.

Then an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, a U.S. citizen who had just dropped off her son at his elementary school. Protests erupted. Zeke's district canceled classes for two days.

After that, Zeke couldn't sleep in his own room. He told his parents of a “grey man” haunting his dreams, and grew anxious about flashing lights through his window. A classmate broke down crying, asking Zeke to pray for her mother and grandmother, who had returned to Mexico. It made him angry, and afraid.

“We couldn’t talk him out of it,” Anikpo said. “He definitely didn’t feel safe.”

The fear that courses through immigrant families — even those here legally — could have profound consequences for a generation of American schoolchildren, experts say. The Brookings Institute estimates 4.6 million U.S. citizen children live with a parent who is undocumented or has temporary legal status, and more than 200,000 have parents who were detained or deported during this Trump administration.

“Children in mixed-status families often live with chronic anticipatory anxiety that a loved one could be detained or deported," a group of psychiatrists wrote in a special report for Psychiatric News. “These fears have been shown to lead to school absenteeism, academic disengagement, and heightened emotional distress.”

Valley View staff have identified students who may need extra help, including the two fifth-graders and a second-grader who, like Liam, had been detained at Dilley Detention Center in Texas, where court documents say children have lacked adequate food and medical care. Herje ran group therapy sessions alongside Sage the goldendoodle for these students.

Returning to school is what many really needed. Herje has witnessed joyful reunions between young friends who hadn't seen each other in person for months.

Herje asked them back then what makes them feel loved. One girl piped up: “When I'm in love, I find my best friend.”

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Balingit reported from Washington.

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