A 25-year-old paraprofessional at a special education school in Inver Grove Heights was taken into custody early Monday and held for nearly 12 hours at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility at Fort Snelling, her mother told the Pioneer Press. Christina Rank (Courtesy of the family) After an apparent collision with a federal vehicle, Christina Rank was taken into custody in the parking lot of Concord Education Center while it was still dark out, according to her mother, Sarah Hunkele. Nearly 12 hours later, close to 7 p.m., Christina Rank was released pending an investigation. Hunkele said the lack of information and waiting to hear about her daughter had been “terrible.” UPDATE: St. Paul, Inver Grove Heights women charged in ICE encounters “You don’t know where she is going, where she is at, what is happening. There is no communication,” Hunkele said. U.S. Rep. Angie Craig’s office was working to learn more and called the detention “shocking.” “I’m incredibly concerned about today’s incident in Inver Grove Heights and will be pushing for answers,” Craig said in a Monday night statement. “Schools should be safe places for our teachers to teach and students to learn.” Craig said she has introduced legislation to keep ICE out of sensitive locations such as schools, daycares and churches. Craig’s office was not able to provide any more information about the case Tuesday. ICE did not respond to requests for comment Monday or Tuesday. Events unclear During a morning phone call from detention, Rank told her mother that she didn’t know why she was being held, Hunkele said. Rank told her mother she would be able to call her again once ICE officials decided whether to press charges against her. But then Rank was unexpectedly released shortly before 7 p.m. Hunkele said she is working with attorneys and others to obtain surveillance video from around the school area to determine what took place. Videos posted on Facebook by an apparent co-worker appear to show an ICE official saying that Rank rammed his car, while bystanders say they saw him ram Rank’s car. The video was taken after the incident, as agents searched Rank’s car in the school parking lot. While ICE agents claim Rank hit their vehicle, Hunklele said that seemed unlikely, based on the damage to her daughter’s car. “There was no damage to her front bumper. The only damage was to the passenger side door and the back window where they had broken it.” Students with disabilities Hunkele questioned why the ICE agents were at the school, which offers alternative learning services for nine south metro public school districts. Rank has been a paraprofessional at the school for the past seven years, working one-on-one with students with disabilities. “With it being a Level 4 school, I don’t understand why they were there,” she said. “The staff is there not only to teach but to protect. For federal agents to show up with guns?” Amber Cherrier, who has worked as a special education teacher in the past, said a Level 4 school is one where the students cannot be around their non-disabled peers and have very limited verbal skills. “These children will likely not understand the demands shouted by police or ICE,” Cherrier wrote in an email Monday night. “They will likely not be able to comply and are extremely vulnerable around police and ICE, especially if the person does not have extensive training and understanding of neurodivergence and how to de-escalate a situation. They also will have a much harder time processing trauma that they witness or happens to them.” Hunkele believes her daughter would never interfere, impede or attack officials. “She’s young,” her mother said. “She’s very passionate about her work. She’s very caring. She would never do anything with ill intent. There was a lot of unnecessary force used in a situation that could have been defused in many other ways.” Minneapolis pair detained In a similar case, two Minneapolis friends who said they were observing ICE actions say they were taken into custody and detained for nearly nine hours on Sunday. Brandon Siguenza told media and detailed in a Facebook post how he and a friend, Patty O’Keefe, were taken into custody near 42nd and 16th streets in South Minneapolis on Sunday morning. He said agents sprayed pepper spray into their vehicle’s vents, broke their windows and arrested them both on charges of obstruction. O’Keefe told KARE-TV that during the drive to the detention facility at the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, one agent told her, “You guys got to stop obstructing us, that’s why that lesbian (expletive) is dead.” O’Keefe said the comment was “shocking.” “The most difficult part of being in that building … was I heard wailing, just desperate, desperate crying from a room full of women,” O’Keefe told KARE. “We heard people screaming ‘Let me out!’, crying, wailing and terrified screams,” Siguenza said in his Facebook post. Other people were staring at the ground, hopeless. Siguenza said he and O’Keefe were put in an area called USCs, which stood for U.S. citizens. O’Keefe was not allowed to make a phone call, he said, but Siguenza was able to call his wife. “Food, water, and bathroom breaks were extremely difficult to acquire,” Siguenza wrote on Facebook. “Eventually they either turned off the intercom or it stopped working, because no one would respond. I could get water and bathroom breaks by pounding on the glass when someone happened to walk by and beg them directly. Hours would go by without anyone checking on us,” he said. During questioning by investigators, Siguenza said he was told “they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don’t), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.” After being held for nearly nine hours, the two were released.