This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 08, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Federal immigration enforcement agents on Wednesday swarmed a high school in Minneapolis, where footage and photographs showed them handcuffing school staff members and firing chemical irritants at students.
According to a report from KSTP 5 Eyewitness News, the agents descended upon Roosevelt High School on Wednesday afternoon, mere hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer fatally shot 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good.
A witness who watched the raid described seeing administrators and staff trying to get the agents away from the building to stop them from apprehending students.
The witness also said that the agents began deploying pepper spray after some students started protesting against their presence on school property.
A Roosevelt High School official confirmed to MPR News that agents wearing US Border Patrol uniforms pepper sprayed students, while also firing pepper balls at them.
Video footage taken from the scene shows agents deploying chemical irritants at demonstrators.
The school official also told MPR News that the agents handcuffed two staff members at the school, and they described getting into a physical confrontation with an agent as they were trying to tell them to leave school property.
“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” the official said. “They don’t care. They’re just animals. I’ve never seen people behave like this.”
In the wake of the raid on the high school, Minneapolis Public Schools announced that it would be canceling all classes for the rest of the week “out of an abundance of caution,” citing “safety concerns” for faculty and students.
Celia Mejia, a Minneapolis woman whose daughter attends the Green Central Elementary School in the southern part of the city, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she had to pick up her daughter on Wednesday after the school went on lockdown after federal immigration agents were spotted in the area.
“That was way too close to school to feel comfortable,” Mejia said.
Julia Haas, another local resident who picked up her child at the elementary school after it went into lockdown, told KSTP 5 Eyewitness News that she was “very” frightened by the ordeal.
“Nobody should have to deal with this ever,” Haas emphasized.
The reasons for the raid on the high school were unclear, and the US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to KSTP Eyewitness 5 News’ or MPR News’ requests for comment.
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