More than an hour earlier than daybreak, on a pitch-black road lined with heaps of Minnesota snow, 10-year-old Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano and her mom headed out to her school bus cease – identical to they do each weekday at 6:10 a.m.
Out of nowhere, federal brokers’ autos surrounded the household’s automotive in suburban Minneapolis. Elizabeth thought the brokers were going to take her to school, her father advised NCS.
Instead, the aspiring physician and her mom were detained and flown 1,200 miles away to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas – with the younger lady’s future up in the air.
Over the following month, at least 5 different kids from her small school district were additionally despatched throughout the nation to Dilley – together with 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos.
“There are other students with whom we have lost contact who might also be in a detention facility,” spokesperson Kristen Stuenkel mentioned.
The kids’s plight has sparked renewed criticism over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, often known as Operation Metro Surge, which has additionally ensnared children and separated family members.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson firmly denied accusations that Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers try to detain college students.
“ICE does NOT target children or schools. That is not how it works,” DHS mentioned. “ICE keeps families together.”
On the bitterly chilly morning of January 6, Elizabeth and her mom were driving to her school bus cease when federal brokers intercepted the household’s automotive and blocked it with their very own autos, Elizabeth’s father Luis Zuna mentioned.
A witness captured the encounter on digicam as a number of brokers surrounded the household’s automotive.
Elizabeth known as her father, who was at his development job, and mentioned they’d been stopped by ICE. But she advised her father what seemed like reassuring phrases.
“She said, ‘ICE is going to drop me off at school,’” Luis mentioned. “So I thought, OK, they will drop her off at school, and we hung up.”
But when Luis later known as his daughter and didn’t get a solution, he panicked and rushed to search out her.
“He was here at school by 7:30 a.m. looking for her,” Highland Elementary secretary Carolina Gutierrez mentioned. “I know that because we open our school doors at 7:25, and he was the first person at my window.”
Luis and school social employee Tracy Xiong hoped the ICE automobile simply hadn’t arrived but.
“Several staff members, including myself, waited outside the school building for a vehicle to approach and drop her off. No one ever came,” Xiong mentioned.
“That morning turned into hours of phone calls, desperately trying to locate a child. We did everything we could to keep Elizabeth’s father calm and allowed him to remain at school as we searched for answers. By that afternoon, we had learned that Elizabeth and her mother were already taken to Texas.”
DHS mentioned mother and father “are requested (if) they wish to be eliminated with their kids or ICE will place the kids with a protected particular person the guardian designates.
“This is consistent with past administration’s immigration enforcement,” the company mentioned.
The agony of not understanding what would occur to his spouse and solely little one overwhelmed Luis, Xiong mentioned.
“In my profession, I have seen many people break down and grieve,” she mentioned. “But the image of Elizabeth’s father will stay with me forever. I watched him sit in his car, bury his head in his hands and cry uncontrollably. Those are images you do not forget.”
Over the following a number of weeks, as Elizabeth languished in detention, at least six different kids from her school district made the identical cross-country journey from Minnesota to the Dilley detention heart, Stuenkel mentioned.
On January 29, a second-grade boy and a fifth-grade boy from Valley View Elementary joined their mom as they were taken away to Texas, the school district mentioned.
“Their mother went to have her regularly scheduled immigration meeting,” Stuenkel mentioned. “As she was leaving it, ICE picked her up. Her two boys were at school at Valley View, and she called the school and asked the principal to bring her sons to her at the Whipple (Federal) Building here in Minnesota, where she was being held.”
The household spent almost a week detained. On Wednesday, after outcry from school officers, the siblings and their mom were launched from Dilley and returned to Minnesota.
And the boys reported a startling discovery in the Texas ICE facility – a schoolmate had been detained with out the school district’s information.
“While the family was at the Dilley detention facility, the boys recognized another Valley View student in the cafeteria,” Stuenkel mentioned.
“This fifth-grade girl, her mother and stepfather had last been in contact with Valley View Elementary on January 9,” she mentioned. “School staff have been trying to reach them since that time and did not know where they were.”
The fifth-grade lady continues to be detained at Dilley, together with a 17-year-old lady who was taken by brokers alongside together with her mom from their condo advanced final month, Stuenkel mentioned.
DHS mentioned it could actually’t touch upon instances with out particular particulars concerning the kids or their mother and father. But the school district mentioned it couldn’t launch a number of the detained college students’ names as a result of they don’t have written permission from their mother and father to take action – and in these instances, the mother and father are detained with their kids.
Several different kids from the school district have been launched – together with Liam, the preschooler who made nationwide headlines after he and his father were taken away by brokers from the driveway of their house.
Hours earlier than Liam was detained, a 17-year-old Columbia Heights High School scholar on his solution to school was additionally taken away by brokers and despatched to Texas, Stuenkel mentioned. The teen has since been launched and has declined to talk publicly about his case.
Elizabeth’s journey began in an impoverished, rural a part of Ecuador, the place her mother and father knew she would have little alternative to thrive, her father mentioned.
“The conditions were really tough. There were a lot of thieves, bad crime conditions,” Luis mentioned.
He mentioned discrimination towards indigenous individuals like him was rampant, notably in some city areas.
“We lived in the countryside, and we went down to the city one time, and that’s when they attacked me – they almost killed me,” he mentioned, displaying scars nonetheless seen on his face.
“So after they threatened me, that’s when we decided to come here and seek asylum.”
Luis, his spouse Rosa and their daughter Elizabeth sought asylum in the US in 2020. The household adopted all correct protocols, together with attending each required listening to, immigration lawyer Bobby Painter mentioned.
But in September 2025, in the midst of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, a decide denied asylum for the household and issued a elimination order, Painter mentioned. The household promptly appealed the choice, and the case has been beneath enchantment ever since, the lawyer mentioned.
In a assertion to NCS, DHS mentioned Elizabeth’s mom “is an illegal alien from Ecuador with a final order of removal — meaning she was given full due process.”
“Officers conducted a vehicle stop to arrest the illegal alien. Upon discovering a child was in the car, officers allowed her to make phone calls to place the child in the custody of someone she designated,” DHS mentioned. “She failed to find a trusted adult to care for the child, so officers kept the family together for the welfare of the child.”
During the hourslong aircraft experience from Minnesota to Texas, Elizabeth was riddled with worry that she could be despatched to Ecuador, mentioned Gutierrez, a household spokesperson. Given the household’s rural, impoverished neighborhood in Ecuador and restricted entry to training, Elizabeth later advised her dad she thought her “dream was over.”
‘It’s like they’re stalking all people’
Columbia Heights Public Schools is a tiny district of three,400 college students simply north of Minneapolis. But the inhabitants seemingly swelled when federal brokers descended on the realm as a part of Operation Metro Surge.
“ICE is so prevalent in our community and it’s like they’re stalking everybody,” Stuenkel mentioned. “You can’t even imagine how bad it is, because it’s such an immigrant community. Over 51% of our students’ home language is Spanish,” and different immigrant households come from East Africa or Asia.
The school district has reported “ICE agents (who) have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our kids.”
At one school, “an ICE vehicle drove onto school property and came up to our high school loading dock, with no business being there. They were told to leave by the high school administration,” CHPS mentioned.
“Last week we had three students driving (separately) that got pulled over by ICE,” Stuenkel mentioned. All of these college students were carrying their US passports and were launched.
“But imagine if you were driving to work and three police cars pulled you over … let alone being a 16- or 17-year-old student on your way to school, and ICE is pulling you over,” Stuenkel mentioned. “How do you concentrate at school?”
Elizabeth and her mother are again house in Minnesota
This week, one month after federal brokers took Elizabeth to Texas as an alternative of school, she and her mom returned to Minnesota, Painter and Gutierrez advised NCS.
“We’re still not clear on the exact reason” of their launch, Painter mentioned Thursday afternoon. NCS has requested DHS about what prompted Elizabeth’s and Rosa’s launch Wednesday.
Gutierrez spoke with the household after they returned and mentioned they’re wanting ahead to “quality time together with privacy and peace.”
But the household’s authorized journey just isn’t over, as they proceed interesting their asylum case. Gutierrez established a GoFundMe account to assist offset the household’s bills.
Elizabeth’s school social employee, who has seen the influence of brokers’ actions on college students, known as for the detainment of kids to cease.
“Children belong in schools, not in detention,” Xiong mentioned. “No child should ever disappear on her way to school.”
NCS’s Maria Aguilar and Chris Boyette contributed to this report.