By Isabel Conforme
Correspondent
A federal judge has ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, from a Texas immigration detention center.
Liam and his father were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Jan. 20 in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, shortly after returning home from the child’s preschool, according to school officials and family attorneys. Both were transported to a federal detention facility in Dilley, Texas, where they remained until a court intervened, according to ABC News.
The incident drew widespread attention after images of Ramos, wearing a bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack, surrounded by ICE officers in his driveway began circulating online, according to AP News. School officials and witnesses said agents used the child as “bait,” instructing him to knock on his front door in an attempt to draw out his mother, a claim the Department of Homeland Security has strongly denied.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X that ICE “did NOT target or arrest a child,” asserting that agents were conducting a “targeted operation” to arrest Arias, whom they described as an “illegal alien from Ecuador.”
According to ABC News, Arias fled on foot, abandoning his son, and officers attempted to place Liam with his mother, who allegedly refused custody. The agency said the father requested that his son remain in his custody.
The family’s attorney, Marc Prokosch, said Ramos and his father entered the U.S. legally in 2024, using the CBP One app to schedule an asylum appointment at a border entry point in Brownsville, Texas. Prokosch emphasized that the family has complied with all legal requirements, attended court hearings, and posed no safety or flight risk, stated BBC News.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, presiding in San Antonio, Texas, issued a scathing order on Jan. 31, directing ICE to release Ramos and his father “as soon as practicable,” but no later than Feb. 3. The judge barred any removal or transfer of the pair while the order was in effect and required ICE to notify the family’s attorney before release, according to Fox News.
In his written opinion, Judge Biery sharply criticized the government’s enforcement tactic, calling the case “ill-conceived and incompetently implemented” and rooted in the “pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
The judge’s order followed days of protests outside the Dilley detention center and visits from Texas Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett.
Community members in Columbia Heights celebrated Ramos’s return, gathering outside the family’s home with balloons and gifts to support the child and his family.
Ramos and his father have a pending asylum case and no deportation order, according to their attorney and school officials. Their first court hearing is scheduled for later this month.
The case has intensified scrutiny of ICE’s enforcement practices and the conditions in family detention centers, as well as sparking calls for broader reforms to U.S. immigration policy.
