US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detained a five-year-old boy on Tuesday during an immigration enforcement operation, Minnesota school officials and the family’s lawyer have said.
Pre-schooler Liam Ramos was with his father – named by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias – when Conejo Arias was approached by agents on his driveway.
In a statement posted on X, the DHS said “ICE did NOT target a child”, but was conducting an operation against his father, an “illegal alien” who “abandoned” his son when approached.
Zena Stenvik, the Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent, asked: “Why detain a five-year-old?
“You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
In a post on X, ICE denied the child had been detained.
“A criminal illegal alien ABANDONED his child as he fled from ICE officers, and our officers ensured the child was kept SAFE in the bitter cold,” the agency said.
“ICE made multiple attempts to get the family inside the house to take custody of the child.
“They refused to accept custody of the child. The father told officers he wanted the child to remain with him.”
DHS did not immediately respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Photos provided to the BBC by the school district show a boy, identified as Liam Ramos, wearing a bunny-shaped winter hat, standing outside as an officer holds on to his backpack.
The Columbia Heights Public Schools authority described these as bystander photos. The district did not identify the individuals who took the pictures, referring to them as “known and confirmed community members”.
Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing the family, told a press conference on Thursday that Liam and his father were being held at a detention centre in San Antonio, Texas, and attorneys were trying to contact them.
Prokosch said the boy and his father had come to the US in 2024 from Ecuador to seek asylum.
“This family was not eluding ICE in any way,” he said. “They were following all the established protocols.”
School officials said an agent asked the child to knock on the door of the home to see if anyone else was there.
The boy had just arrived home from pre-school at the time, Stenvik told the press conference.
She said another adult living in the home asked to take the young boy inside, but was refused.
School board member Mary Granlund said she was on the scene and told immigration officials she could take Liam Ramos, but they still detained him.
US Vice-President JD Vance, who visited Minnesota on Thursday amid ongoing protests against immigration enforcement, told reporters ICE had no choice because “the father ran”.
“What are they supposed to do?” he said of ICE agents. “Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?
“Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?”
He added: “If the argument is that you can’t arrest people who have violated laws because they have children. . . that doesn’t make any sense.”
ICE agents’ detention of a 5-year-old boy in Minneapolis this week has inflamed an already tense debate over immigration authorities’ tactics — and put a spotlight on the unknown number of children being scooped up when their parents are arrested.
Driving the news: Images of the boy wearing a small backpack and a light blue stocking cap fueled angry speculation in the Twin Cities that ICE was detaining children as “bait” to catch parents wanted for alleged immigration violations.
- Federal officials rejected those claims Thursday, and alleged that the boy was detained by ICE agents after he was left behind when his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled officers who were trying to arrest him.
The episode is a reminder of the growing number of children, likely hundreds of them, who’ve wound up in family detention centers with their parents during President Trump’s push to deport immigrants.
- That includes those who, like Arias, were seeking asylum.
The big picture: ICE routinely detains children whose parents are arrested and targeted for deportation. In fact, creating detention space for families before they’re deported has been a priority of Trump’s second administration.
- The idea, officials have said, is to deport children with their parents so as not to separate them.
Arias, who is from Ecuador, and his son were together Thursday in the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas.
- Meanwhile, critics of ICE’s tactics were juxtaposing images of the boy, surrounded by immigration agents, with Trump’s boast this week that his operation is arresting the “worst of the worst” criminals in Minnesota.
What they’re saying: “This family is following U.S. legal parameters and has an active asylum case with no order of deportation,” local school superintendent Zena Stenvik said, criticizing the seizure of Arias and his son at a news conference on Wednesday.
- Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that “ICE did not target a child,” but said agents were after his father, “who was released into the U.S. by the Biden administration.”
- She didn’t respond to a follow-up question about whether Arias had a court notice to appear or a final deportation order. Typically immigrants in the asylum process aren’t held in detention while making what’s known as an “affirmative claim” for asylum.
McLaughlin said that when a parent is arrested by immigration agents, they’re “asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”
- “This is consistent with past administrations’ immigration enforcement,” she added.
- In some cases, children who are U.S. citizens have been deported with their noncitizen parents.
During his visit to Minnesota on Thursday, Vice President Vance echoed the administration’s defense for detaining parents arrested by immigration agents as well as their children.
- “If the argument is that you can’t arrest people who violate the laws because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement,” he said.
Between the lines: ICE detention data doesn’t indicate how many child detainees are being held with their parents.
- The latest figure on the average number of people being held at the Dilley detention center is about 700. Detainees stay for an average of 20 days.
- Another South Texas family detention center, in Karnes County, holds an average of about 1,100 people with an average stay of about 49 days, according to ICE detention data from late December.
- After litigation, the U.S. government agreed to not hold minors in detention (with their parents or as unaccompanied minors) for longer than 20 days.
“All of the research shows that the actions that the administration is doing is very bad for children’s health and children’s well-being,” said Joanna Dreby, a sociologist and author of a book on the impact of immigration enforcement on children.
- “I think about all the kids in that little boy’s classroom and his school,” Dreby said. “All of the kids in that elementary school are going to be very, very afraid — U.S. citizen kids as well.”
