With the spirit of 1776 turned to 2026, an east Minneapolis woman dashed from her home with a cell phone at the ready as a big black pickup truck driven by a burly Caucasian man pulled up to where an Hispanic woman stood with two young boys stood outside her house.
This was Minneapolis, where people being snatched from the streets has gone from the frighteningly rare to horrifically routine, and where residents rush towards such snatchings to record the videos which are their only weapon against the rule of ICE.
But this man driving up in a truck was not one of those routines of a city under occupation.
The trucks’ windows were open, and the boys and their mother saw that the man at the wheel was Jason Kuhlman, principal of Valley View Elementary in suburban Columbia Heights. Kuhlman assured the woman with the phone that he, and a man with him, were not who she clearly assumed them to be.
“She was ready for war,” Kuhlman told the Daily Beast. “We’re like, ‘No, no, no, no, I’m from the school, I’m here to pick them up. I’m helping them, we’re not ICE.’”
It was a reunion with the boys which he had come to fear could not happen.
Kuhlman had last seen the boys—a fifth grader and a second grader who have not been named—on January 29, which he counts as the worst day of his nearly three decades in education. That included January 20, the day Valley View pre-schooler Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were detained by ICE as the boy arrived home from school. A photo of the five-year-old with a restraining hand on his shoulder as he stood in the snow outside his home in a knit blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack became the defining image of the Trump immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
The two brothers had been in class when their mother called the school office to report that ICE had arrested her at a scheduled court appearance in her ongoing asylum claim. She said she had no relatives who could take custody of her boys and asked the school to deliver them to the local immigration detention center.
“To jail essentially,” Kuhlman told the Daily Beast.
Just the prospect of facilitating the incarceration of children ran contrary to everything that makes Kuhlman one of the best of the best in education.
But the only alternative would have resulted in the boys being separated from their mother. He had been left with no other choice than to transport them a tearful 25 minutes, in a school van, to the H. Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, which houses the immigration detention center in the terrorized metropolis.
There would have been another ionic image if somebody had taken a photo inside of the boys standing remarkably brave in their school uniforms—yellow polo shirts amid combat-clad federal agents.
“There were all sorts of ICE agents filtering around,” Kuhlman recalled. “They had their sidearms, like pistols, they had ARs, the body armor.”
He and a school nurse he had brought along stayed with the brothers until they were ushered through a buzz-in-buzz-out wooden door. He gave each boy a big hug.
“They were pretty strong,” Kuhlman said. “They weren’t crying. We were more upset than they were.”
The boys and their mother were transported to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, less than 12 hours later. The for-profit facility has been the subject of complaints involving moldy food and brownish, bad smelling water.
Texas health officials have also reported a measles outbreak among the detainees there, but even if Kuhlman were not vaccinated, that would not have stopped him from hugging the brothers again on that day he drew up outside their home, as it turned into the best day of his career.
The mother’s boyfriend had called Kuhlman in the late morning to report that she and her sons had been released and were now on a seemingly random residential street a dozen miles from their home.
Kuhlman hopped into his truck along with Kevin Centeno, a full-service community school coordinator. He arrived at the improbable location, and there they were, the two boys he had last seen when a diabolical dilemma forced him to deliver them to where no child should be. He was not sure how exactly they got to that particular street or why they were left there, he said. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE did not respond to queries.
“It was surreal,” Kuhlman told The Daily Beast.
After Kuhlman convinced the would-be protector that he and Centeno were not ICE, he gave the boys hugs of pure joy. He then loaded them and their mother into the truck and started toward their home.
On the way, the older boy mentioned that he had chanced to see a classmate from Valley View in the cafeteria at the Texas detention center. Kuhlman recognized the name of a fifth-grade girl who had gone missing along with her mother and stepfather. The school’s last contract with her had been on January 9.
“My head snapped around, and I said, ”What? Who did you say?’” Kuhlman recalled.
The sighting of the girl brought to four the number of kids who had been detained at a school of 583 students. Her mother brought to 27 the number of Valley View school parents who had been swept up by federal agents. Kuhlman would subsequently seek to arrange legal assistance for the latest student and her family. There was also another Valley View student they had been unable to locate since the ICE invasion.
In the meantime, Kuhlman returned the mom and her brothers to where they should have never had to leave.
“We brought him home and dropped them off, and they’re just smiling and waving, and saying they’ll be back [to school] on Monday,” Kuhlman reported.
Kuhlman said that they might have to wait until they got health clearances.
“I want them learning,” the mother told him.
Liam’s mother had said the same.
“They’re all anxious to go back to school,” Kuhlman reported.
Kuhlman noted that Liam had been detained for two weeks, the brothers for six days. And even with a “drawdown” of 700 federal immigration agents, there were still 2,000 of them in the streets.
Yet in further manifestation of the Spirit of 2026, kids who might be expected to be fearful of even venturing from their homes were raring to go back to school.
“Blows your mind,” Kuhlman said. “These kids are strong. These families are strong and resilient.”
Kuhlman had made sure that Liam’s cubby and the brothers’ desks were still there, awaiting their return.
“We don’t repurpose them,” Kuhlman had told the Daily Beast before the brothers were released. “Those are our kids. They belong here. [The desks] will stay empty until we get them back, or we hear otherwise. The same thing with Liam. That’s their spot.”
That would similarly apply to the girl spotted in the Dilley cafeteria or any other student who might go missing from school
“This is our way to remember and honor you, because you didn’t deserve this, you didn’t deserve to have this happen to you, and we’re going to welcome [you] back,” Kuhlman said.
All of the Valley View kids who were detained and then released remain in legal jeopardy until their cases are resolved. The Trump administration moved on Friday to scuttle Liam and his family’s asylum petition. But he and his schoolmates are still expected to return to the classrooms that await them. Remote learning is not enough for these families.
“They didn’t come to this country for them to learn at home,” Kuhlman said. “They want them in school learning.”
As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, these newest arrivals demonstrate what made American great in the first place.
“Our kids are resilient,” Kuhlman said. “Man, are they resilient.”
Now there is one more child, a little girl in a hellish lock-up in Texas, who needs all the resilience her classmates have already shown, and the true spirit of the last 250 years—not the twisted spirit of Trump.
The post Opinion: ICE Snatched Child After Child from This School—with a Chilling Twist appeared first on The Daily Beast.
