When Denver Public Schools tried to block the Trump administration’s policy on enforcing immigration laws near schools, they got clobbered in court. The district claimed victory anyway.

But on Monday, The Denver Gazette exposed even more of their claims as bogus — built on inflated data and false pretexts to justify a lawsuit that never should have been filed in the first place.

Here’s what happened: In February, DPS sued to block a revised Trump immigration enforcement policy, arguing that ICE raids at the Cedar Run Apartments on Feb. 6 — near district schools — proved schools were no longer “protected areas.” They didn’t just want it stopped in Denver — they wanted it blocked nationwide.

In sworn affidavits, Superintendent Alex Marrero and other district administrators claimed attendance dropped due to widespread fears that immigration raids might target schools — alleging “noticeable” declines without offering a shred of proof.

DPS insisted this posed threats to “stability” and district finances because, they argued, lower attendance jeopardized funding tied to enrollment. Never mind that enrollment and attendance aren’t the same — or that academic failures and school safety concerns, not immigration enforcement, are what drive families from this district.

“Not only were people fearful following the raids,” Marrero claimed, “but they also did not have any guarantee that the next raid would not be at the school.”

Except that was false. DPS couldn’t even tell U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico whether Cedar Run violated the earlier Biden-era guidance they wanted restored.

That’s because it didn’t: The new policy merely shifted approvals from D.C. back to local ICE directors, who were once again entrusted to exercise “discretion and common sense.”

Cedar Run was — and remains — their only example. That was in February, and there still hasn’t been a single ICE enforcement on a school campus anywhere in the country.

If this incident wasn’t clearly forbidden under the old policy, DPS didn’t meet the bar for an injunction. Domenico concluded their case wasn’t about a narrow question — it was about “more enforcement in general.”

He nailed it. DPS was trying to create de facto sanctuary zones using the courts — not protect schools that were never at risk anyway. Domenico wasn’t going to let one district rewrite federal immigration policy for the entire country.

As Carl Sagan famously said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. DPS failed in that. The school district’s extraordinary claim — that the new Trump guidance reflected a radical change justifying nationwide judicial intervention — demanded overwhelming proof of harm.

Instead, Domenico concluded the greater threat to the public interest would come from “a federal court seeking to overturn immigration policy.” DPS, he explained, failed to “overcome my extreme reluctance to consider a nationwide injunction.”

That reluctance proved prescient: Four months later, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited universal injunctions in a landmark 6-3 decision.

But for DPS, it gets worse. The district didn’t just fail the legal test, conflate attendance with enrollment and cause panic. The district skewed the data in an attempt to make its case.

As The Denver Gazette reported Monday, the district’s claim that Trump’s policy caused attendance to tumble was never supported.

On Jan. 21, attendance fell district-wide — but that was the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, and Trump had been in office for one day. Is that really evidence of sudden mass fear over ICE on school grounds?

Then there’s Feb. 3. A Gazette analysis found a greater attendance drop at schools with more Hispanic students. For every 10-percentage-point boost in a school’s Hispanic population, attendance dipped 8.7%.

But here’s the thing: Feb. 3 was the national “Day Without Immigrants” protest. Students deliberately skipped school, with some attending a rally at the state Capitol.

Even DPS spokesman Scott Pribble admitted the “spike in student absences” was “directly related to” the protest — not fear of enforcement.

Two days later, when ICE carried out the Cedar Run raids, attendance rebounded — and even held “relatively steady in the days that followed,” The Gazette noted.

Yet DPS still told a federal court that immigration enforcement was scaring families away and, therefore, harming the district.

Talk about gaslighting a judge.

Sure, some schools like Place Bridge Academy, with many immigrant students, reported attendance drops have sometimes topped 20%. But a few outliers out of over 200 schools don’t prove a pattern — or warrant a sweeping injunction.

And even if you accept those outlier schools’ attendance dips were related to apprehension about immigration enforcement, who’s really to blame? The Trump policy — or a school district that whipped up false fears over the supposed end of immigration protections at schools?

Let’s be real: Nothing in DPS’s lawsuit was honest or transparent, let alone grounded in truth or reality. It was political theater, casting the district as an intrepid warrior against Trump.

DPS stoked anxiety by playing politics. They blamed attendance declines on an enforcement mirage they created — all to make headlines from federal court, only to get smacked down by the judge. And now, thanks to The Denver Gazette’s yeoman’s reporting, we know their attendance claims were greatly exaggerated from the get-go.

No matter how you feel about the president or his policies, this isn’t governance. It’s manipulation masquerading as virtue.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.