How MN Teachers Union Funds ‘Front Group’ Trying To Abolish ICE

Anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agitators in Minnesota operate as a “front group” for a state teachers union in the leftist campaign against immigration law, according to activist documents and federal records brought to light by Defending Education.

Minneapolis Families for Public Schools (MFPS), reportedly an “initiative” of TakeAction Minnesota (TAM), helps organize “Rapid Response Networks & ICE Watch” centered around neighborhoods and schools, the documents show, while TAM has partnered with other radical-left groups in events that involve student walk-outs and backed other leftist activism at schools.

“The teachers unions continue to prove they are rotten apples that only care about far-left street activism, to the detriment of educating children,” Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education, told The Federalist. “Teachers and community groups should be dedicating time to improving learning outcomes for students, not creating strategies and lists of people to attempt to thwart law enforcement.”

Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, has financially supported TAM, and an archived version of TAM’s website shows MFPS stating that it is “standing with” the Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE), the local union, during its next contract negotiation, because “the MFE contract is a place to win strong language and enforcement on our priorities.”

Staley said that TAM is “basically a front group that can get away with doing some things the unions can’t.”

Since The Federalist reached out to TAM for comment about MFPS, the organization’s website has changed, and some information now appears to be behind a membership wall.

TAM was a collaborator in a coalition called “Melt the ICE,” along with groups like Unidos MN/Monarca, Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America, Sunrise Twin Cities, Jewish Voice for Peace Twin Cities, and many others. Those groups organized a “week of action” from Feb. 25 to March 1 for “neighbors and anti-ICE organizers in Minnesota … to participate in ICE-watch rapid response networks and huge public protests.”

“We will teach and demonstrate resistance tactics that can be replicated elsewhere, leaving no community undefended. We hope to force an end to ICE’s unprecedented siege of Minnesota — and further the movement to abolish ICE altogether while we do it,” the Melt the ICE website stated.

TAM offered “trainings and panels” to participants, and the coalition said it was “fighting for” goals such as getting “ICE out of Minnesota now”; the “release all our abducted neighbors” and closing of “all detention camps”; a “statewide eviction moratorium”; “drop[ping] all charges against ICE resisters”; “amnesty for all immigrants”; and the complete elimination of “ICE, DHS, the police, and prisons.”

A training event hosted by TAM earlier this year aimed to teach people how to take control of local “precinct caucuses” (which the organization defined as a “gatekeeping phrase that means ‘neighborhood meeting’”) in order to choose far-left politicians to run for office.

Participants would “learn what precinct caucus is, why it matters, and how we can show up to make sure that only #FamiliesOverBillionaires and #ICEout candidates get what they need to run competitive races,” the website stated, adding,  “elections f**king matter” and “we deserve politicians who actually act to get ICE out of our schools, and who deliver the housing for all, food support, universal pre-K, and universal health care — and more! — that our families and communities deserve.” (Descriptions of forthcoming training events use similar wording.)

The documents exposed by Defending Education told anti-ICE groups how to use “rapid response networks & ICE Watch,” in part by deploying “fast communications networks for verifying and dispatching Rapid Responders to threats of abduction and snatch squads that are deployed in our cities and neighborhoods.” The strategy also involves “keeping an eye out in your neighborhood with Foot, Bike, and Car Patrols and people monitoring and watching on corners, key intersections, and important community spaces.”

The tactics are strikingly similar to the street-corner sentry system used by Minneapolis agitators, one of whom explained to The Federalist their involvement with schools. While it was initially difficult to verify the agitator’s claims, these documents suggest the claims are true. Notably the documents indicate MFPS orchestrates “Local Text alert groups for rapid response and information sharing.”

MFPS also seemingly designed a form to “report ICE at your school,” according to Defending Education. The purported purpose of the form is to “aggregate data from this form for future MFPS organizing or for legal strategies to get ICE out of schools.”

Federal financial records show that TAM (and potentially MFPS by extension) has received money from Education Minnesota, the state-level teachers union, which is “an affiliate of both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA),” according to Defending Education.

Education Minnesota has given TAM a seemingly small amount of $132,500 since 2015. More than a third — $50,000 — came in August 2025. TAM has also brought in funds from groups that get millions from AFT and NEA.

In cases where ideology — like critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) — is the driving force, however, action may be a far more potent tool for proliferation than actual funding. Money transfers show concrete affirmation, but enthusiastic participation from teachers and others who actually have interactions with students can provide a bigger boost to the anti-ICE agitation movement.

The activist documents also portrayed a Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) anti-ICE agitator as exemplary: “When federal agents attacked a neighborhood with tear gas near Funston Elementary, CTU delegate Maria Heavener didn’t wait for permission — she organized.”

“Within minutes, she activated neighborhood safety chats and over 100 parents and neighbors lined the streets to protect kids walking home. In a city under attack, Maria and her community showed what courage, care and solidarity looks like,” it stated. “We Keep Us Safe.”

The “we keep us safe” motto is notable. A left-wing militant in Minneapolis told The Federalist the slogan is an anarchist rallying cry that rejects law and order and promotes a warlord-style fiefdom, akin to the CHOP-occupied zone in Seattle during the George Floyd riots. The use of the slogan suggests anti-ICE agitators see that chaos as a pattern to follow.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.