Seeing the Whole ICEberg
ICE's surge in Minnesota has ended. Now we need to measure the damage it left behind.
President Trump is starting to remove some of the most visible symbols of his aggressive immigration policies: he fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem yesterday and his administration announced the end of ICE’s Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota last month.
But as the most visible parts of ICE’s enforcement recede from our streets (and headlines), public attention cannot recede with it. How can we maintain the political will to grapple with the devastation left behind, especially when our cell phone cameras can no longer capture the depth of the damage?
The truth is: ICE’s widely-publicized violent actions were just the tip of the ICEberg.
For our communities and schools, the full scale of Operation Metro Surge’s disruption on students’ learning and mental health is not yet visible. In the past few months, protestors blew whistles to warn about immediate threats from ICE. We need to do something similar for the hidden threats that remain after they leave.
I wrote about ICE’s full impact on students—and what we should do about it—in a commentary for the Minnesota Reformer. See below.
Commentary
See the whole ICEberg: Minnesota students need resources to cope
COVID-19 and Hurricane Katrina offer useful lessons for aftermath of ICE incursion
Spencer Sherman
March 6, 2026. 6:00 am.
Large-scale disruptions don’t end when the headlines do. I learned that during two other crises: I served as a state education official during COVID-19 and as a teacher in post-Katrina New Orleans.
During Operation Metro Surge, student absenteeism increased on a scale unseen since COVID. Though the pandemic began nearly six years ago, our students and schools have not yet recovered. The rate of chronic absenteeism today is higher in every single state than it was before the pandemic. Enrollment in public schools is down by 1.2 million students, leading to a vicious cycle with reduced enrollment driving funding cuts. Students’ test scores are still far below pre-COVID levels, effectively wiping out more than 15 years’ worth of hard-won education gains.
But the COVID comparison doesn’t quite capture the psychological impact of students witnessing large-scale instability in their communities and the separation of families. Consider the lessons of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Researchers estimated that over 40% of students in post-Katrina New Orleans met the criteria for a mental health referral. Psychologists now know that adverse childhood experiences, like the sort experienced by students in New Orleans then and in Minnesota now, increase the risk of a variety of negative outcomes later in life, ranging from unemployment to chronic disease.
For educators and parents outside of targeted enforcement areas, it may be tempting to believe that their students and children will not be affected. But new research shows that increased immigration enforcement in Florida last year, which was far less intense than in Minnesota, has already lowered test scores for students, including citizens.
While COVID and Katrina are sobering precedents, they also hint at potential solutions. In both crises, once education policymakers saw the full scale of the problem they were facing, they implemented bold solutions (such as tutoring and new school models) that improved student outcomes.
Changing What We Measure
To assess the true impact of Operation Metro Surge and develop adequate solutions, policymakers must confront three measurement gaps.
Attendance: At the Rhode Island Department of Education, we created a live statewide attendance dashboard to track chronic absenteeism after COVID, which allowed the state to build targeted and effective policies to bring students back to school. The Minnesota Department of Education should implement a similar solution: a public, statewide attendance dashboard showing how current attendance patterns compare to pre-Operation Metro Surge.
Enrollment: Minnesota law requires schools to remove students from their attendance rolls if they are absent for 15 consecutive days. For districts experiencing massive ICE-related absenteeism, this policy artificially undercounts absent students, preventing policymakers from seeing the full scale of absenteeism while simultaneously reducing schools’ funding when they need it most. Policymakers should adjust definitions of absenteeism to avoid these unintended consequences.
Mental health: Many districts conduct qualitative surveys of student attitudes at the end of the year. ICE-impacted districts should conduct those surveys now, so we can better understand how ICE has impacted students’ mental health.
MDE should aggregate this data statewide and create a public report showing any changes compared to last year.
If Minnesota wants to support its students, it has to see more of the iceberg. By accurately measuring and calling attention to changes in attendance, enrollment and student well-being, we can design the policies that true recovery demands.
Spencer Sherman is a principal consultant at Education First, and former Chief for Innovation at the Rhode Island Department of Education. He lives in Minnesota.
Photo illustration by Getty Images