In a recent incident at a Minnesota middle school, an 8th-grade geography class was presented with slides labeling the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as having “harassed” migrants. Additionally, students were offered extra credit for watching a 19-minute video concerning “ICE and Trump’s $170 billion deportation machine.”
Fox News Digital managed to obtain the complete set of slides shared with Hermantown Middle School students. These materials prompted students to consider the question: “How is President Trump trying to reduce the large number of undocumented immigrants as promised in his election campaign?”
The nonprofit organization Defending Education, which focuses on advocacy for education, parents, and students, engaged in correspondence with the school’s principal. According to the principal, the lesson’s content is in line with Minnesota’s educational standards.
A photograph captures protesters holding anti-ICE signs, a sentiment echoed in the lesson’s content. (Stephanie Tacy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nicole Neily, founder and president of Defending Education, expressed her disapproval to Fox News Digital, stating, “It’s bad enough that this biased lesson is replete with falsehoods — but for the school principal to defend such garbage truly adds insult to injury.” She continued, “Students are being force-fed ideological propaganda during finite lesson time (when they’re not being encouraged by activist teachers to walk out of their classrooms, that is) and told what to think, rather than how to think.”
Neily further noted, “It’s little wonder that families are fleeing the public education system in droves,” highlighting a growing dissatisfaction with how sensitive topics are being handled in educational settings.
The slides given to students also explain why “tricky & violent tactics,” including federal agents wearing masks to hide their identity, can be used by ICE agents for “kidnapping/hurting people.”
Anti-ICE students and professors hold a rally. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Middle school students were then given examples of “thousands of LEGAL immigrants and 170 U.S. citizens” being “dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot,” encouraging the 8th graders to click a link for video content.
The school is part of Hermantown Community Schools, whose K-12 2024-2027 “Blueprint for Success” outlines curriculum requirements for schools in the district that include “antiracist, culturally sustaining, and [curriculum that] reflects the diversity of the student population.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the school for comment, but has not yet heard back.
The Minnesota school district defines antiracist as “actively working to identify and eliminate racism in all forms in order to change policies, behaviors, and beliefs that perpetuate racist ideas and actions.”
The school system also calls for “culturally sustaining,” which they define as the integration of “content and practices that infuse the culture and language of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities who have been and continue to be harmed and erased through the education system.”
A Minnesota middle school showed 8th graders slides accusing ICE of “harassing” migrants and offered extra credit for watching a video on Trump’s deportation policies. (iStock)
Hermantown Community Schools instructs the advising committee to “improve students’ equitable access to effective and more diverse teachers.”
The curriculum remains in place as K-12 students and some teachers across the country have engaged in school walkouts.
In Cincinnati, students wreaked havoc on a local Kroger grocery store after walking out of school for an anti-ICE demonstration earlier this month, where students were filmed throwing objects at the ceiling, and a witness said students were taking beer and adult beverages from the shelves.
In Virginia, more than 300 high school students were suspended after an anti-ICE walkout that resulted in a police response last week, and multiple teens were arrested during a student anti-ICE walkout in Quakertown, Pennsylvania this week.
Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News. Story tips can be sent to Preston.Mizell@fox.com and on X @MizellPreston
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