Court Weighs Pausing Policy on Immigration Operations at Schools

A Minnesota judge appeared skeptical Wednesday of a challenge to a US Department of Homeland Security memo that loosened restrictions on conducting immigration enforcement operations at and near schools.

“I’m really struggling, I think most, with this redressability piece,” Judge Laura M. Provinzino said, foreshadowing a possible ruling in the government’s favor that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the policy change. “If we get rid of the 2025 policy, but immigration enforcement remains the same, I’m not certain that going back to the 2021 policy” would allow teachers to provide reassurances that students and staff won’t be subjected to immigration enforcement at school. “I think there’s still enough carveouts there for immigration enforcement to happen” in or near schools, Provinzino said.

The comments came during a hearing at the US District Court for the District of Minnesota on a preliminary injunction motion brought by two Minnesota school districts and an education workers’ union.

Amanda Cialkowski, representing the plaintiffs, said that although those carveouts have existed for more than 30 years, immigration enforcement operations weren’t happening at schools. And that “shows that the government was complying with the policy that if it was possible to avoid it, they did.” Now, there is an “enormous amount of enforcement activity happening around schools,” which shows it’s directly tied to the policy change, Cialkowski said.

But Jessica Lundberg with the US Department of Justice said that even if Provinzino vacated the 2025 policy—which rescinded a long-standing government policy not to engage in immigration enforcement activities at or near schools and other “sensitive locations” such as places of worship, absent exigent circumstances—it wouldn’t materially change anything because there wouldn’t “be any change necessarily in enforcement.”

Lundberg argued that the plaintiffs are “really challenging the enforcement activity” and not the memo itself, because the prior guidance “never prevented wholesale immigration enforcement activity in or around schools.”

“Because both memos have a certain amount of discretion available to them, reverting back to the 2021 memorandum is not going to provide them the relief that they are seeking,” Lundberg said.

The school districts and Education Minnesota filed suit during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities—known as Operation Metro Surge—alleging that because of the memo, federal immigration agents were arresting parents, students, and school staff at bus stops and outside school buildings. That led to an increase in absences and students shifting to remote-only learning, threatening the schools’ funding and disrupting the districts’ core educational missions, they alleged.

Denver Public Schools also sued the administration over the policy change but was denied a preliminary injunction in March 2025. It dropped the lawsuit months later. Several churches and a labor union have also challenged the policy, alleging it’s transformed places of worship into “sources of extreme anxiety rather than places of healing, expression, reflection, celebration, and refuge.” The government’s motion to dismiss in that suit is pending.

Nilan Johnson Lewis PA, Democracy Forward Foundation, Zimmerman Reed LLP, and Kevin Riach of Minneapolis represent the plaintiffs.

The case is Fridley Pub. Sch. Dist., Indep. Sch. Dist. 14 v. Noem, D. Minn., No. 0:26-cv-01023, 4/8/26.