Teachers Unions Shut Down Minnesota Schools for Anti-ICE Activism

While Minnesota reels from chaos sparked by the fatal shooting of an armed agitator interfering with ICE operations, the state’s teachers unions have decided it’s the perfect time to abandon education altogether in favor of street activism.

This week, the Saint Paul Federation of Educators (SPFE) shut down classrooms, called for a “Day of Action,” and openly encouraged members to stop working, stop teaching, and even stop shopping all to protest federal immigration enforcement. Their demands? Nothing less than the complete removal and defunding of ICE.

And they’re dragging students along for the ride.

Viral footage shows teachers and K-12 students walking out of schools in coordinated protests, cheered on by union leadership who proudly declared they are “on the side” of the students. Never mind the fact that in Saint Paul alone, roughly 70% of elementary students can’t meet grade-level standards in reading or math.

This isn’t about education. It’s about ideological indoctrination. And Minnesota’s public education system has become ground zero for the Revolutionary Industrial Complex a sprawling alliance of activist unions, far-Left university programs, and radical bureaucrats who have traded teaching for training tomorrow’s protestors.

Just look at what’s being pushed:

• Minnesota State University Mankato openly trains future educators using Critical Race Theory as a foundational framework.

• The required course “ED 101 – Introduction to Critical Race Theory in Education” prepares teachers to be “anti-racist practitioners,” with social justice activism front and center.

• The University of Minnesota’s RIDGS program offers free K-12 lesson plans, including one for sixth-graders titled “Protest Art & the Movement for Black Life,” which instructs students to create their own protest art.

And the activism doesn't stop at theory. Saint Paul Public Schools (SPPS) and Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) now offer “Ethnic Studies” courses that teach “resistance,” “civil disobedience,” and encourage students to challenge capitalism, white savior narratives, and Western culture itself.

In one MPS course, students are taught that slavery, genocide, and white supremacy are products of capitalism and Western civilization, while being encouraged to engage in direct activism.

Is it any wonder that middle and high schoolers are now walking out of classrooms with fists raised and protest signs in hand? This isn’t organic outrage. It’s the inevitable result of years of strategic radicalization embedded in teacher training programs and classroom content.

These are children being coached by adults with a political agenda teachers, professors, union bosses, and activist organizers who have replaced facts with feelings and education with ideology.

Let’s be clear: the First Amendment protects peaceful protest. But when taxpayer-funded institutions collude to shut down schools and use children as pawns in a political campaign, it’s not civic engagement it’s exploitation.

Families should be outraged. While schools push protest, basic academic achievement continues to crater. In Minneapolis, math and reading proficiency rates are collapsing, and the achievement gap grows wider by the year. Instead of focusing on education recovery post-COVID, these unions are doubling down on activism.

This is not an isolated incident. It is the result of a well-funded, well-organized movement that has taken hold of the education system from top to bottom.

It’s time for serious accountability:

• State leaders must investigate how these activist curriculums made it into public classrooms.

• Union leaders who abuse their position to push political agendas at the expense of children’s education must be held responsible.

• School boards must be forced to explain why ideological training is being prioritized over reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Minnesota’s streets may be frozen, but its classrooms are burning with radicalism. The question is no longer whether activism has replaced education it’s whether anyone in power has the courage to stop it.

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