Did ICE tear gas high schoolers?

1. What witnesses, staff and unions say happened

Multiple local outlets relay firsthand accounts from students, school staff and the Minneapolis teachers’ union that federal agents “tear‑gassed” or deployed chemical agents on crowds outside Roosevelt High during dismissal, causing students and staff to cough, flee or shelter in place and prompting the district to cancel classes out of safety concerns ^{[1] [2] [5] [6]}.

2. What DHS and ICE say in response

DHS spokespeople repeatedly denied that tear gas was used at the school, saying officers employed “targeted crowd control” and asserting that schools, students and staff were not targeted; DHS did not, in the public statements collected by outlets, acknowledge use of CS or CN gas labeled as “tear gas” ^{[1] [3] [4] [7]}.

3. Reporting that complicates the binary claim

Several outlets note a narrowing of language in union and local reports — some accounts later characterize the substance as pepper spray or an unspecified “chemical irritant” rather than classic military or riot-control tear gas — and videos circulated online reportedly show an agent discharging a spray into a crowd, which reporters described as a chemical irritant like tear gas ^{[8] [9] [4]}.

4. Independent evidence and investigative limits in the reporting

None of the supplied articles cites forensic testing or an independent chemical analysis confirming the precise agent used at Roosevelt, and DHS declined to specify which chemical irritants, if any, were employed; several outlets note that the school district and other authorities had opened investigations but at the time of reporting there was no public, irrefutable chain-of-custody or lab result proving deployment of tear gas ^{[1] [10] [3]}.

5. Why terminology matters — tear gas vs. pepper spray vs. “chemical irritant”

News organizations and official spokespeople use different terms interchangeably — “tear gas,” “pepper spray,” “chemical irritant,” and “targeted crowd control” — and those terms have different legal, tactical and health implications; some teacher and union statements explicitly used “tear gas,” while DHS and other outlets described pepper spray or declined to identify the agent, creating genuine ambiguity in what actually occurred ^{[8] [6] [10]}.

6. Stakes, narratives and possible institutional incentives

Teacher unions and school officials emphasized student safety and framed the incident as an unacceptable intrusion that endangered children, which presses for accountability and rapid school closures ^{[5] [6]}; DHS framed its actions as a necessary response to hostilities and assaults on officers, an account that justifies law-enforcement tactics and seeks to limit political fallout ^{[4] [7]}.

7. Bottom line — what can be concluded from the available reporting

Based solely on the sources provided, it cannot be definitively confirmed that ICE deployed legally defined “tear gas” on high school students; however, multiple credible eyewitnesses, union leaders and local reporters describe agents using a chemical irritant that affected students and staff, while DHS/ICE deny use of tear gas and describe different crowd‑control measures — the available public reporting documents strong, conflicting claims and an ongoing investigation but lacks an independent chemical verification to settle the dispute ^{[1] [2] [10] [3]}.