Five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father released from Texas detention center | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
A five-year-old boy and his father were back in Minneapolis on Sunday after being released from a Texas immigration detention center where they were held for more than a week, according to U.S. House Representative Joaquin Castro.
“Liam is home now. With his hat and backpack. Thank you to everyone who called for freedom for Liam,” Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said in a post on X. “We won’t stop until all the children and families are home.”
The Texas politician said he picked them up from the detention center and brought them back to Minneapolis early Sunday.
Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on January 20.
A viral photo of the five-year-old preschooler wearing a bunny hat and plaid coat has sparked outrage across the country after claims the child, who was stopped in the driveway of his home, was used as bait to try to arrest his mother.
On Saturday, a US judge ordered the release of the five-year-old boy and his father from the detention center, saying: “The case has its roots in the government’s ill-conceived and implemented pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.” »
On the day of his arrest, the five-year-old was returning from school with his father when immigration agents removed him from their car near their home in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, according to the school district.
“This family meets U.S. legal parameters and has an active asylum case with no deportation order,” Zena Stenvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public School District, said in a Jan. 21 statement. “I’ve looked at the legal documents with my own eyes. Why detain a five-year-old child? You can’t tell me this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
Stenvik said another adult who lived in the home was outside during the encounter and pleaded to take custody of the child so he would not be detained, but the officers refused.
The Department of Homeland Security refuted the claim, posting on X that the five-year-old “was ABANDONED.” [sic] by his father, and the alleged mother REFUSED to take custody of her own child.”
Upon the release of the preschooler and his father, the school district said Sunday that it was “grateful for the overwhelming number of well wishes and offers of support from people around the world.”
“Liam’s release is an important development, and we hope it will also lead to positive developments for other families, including our four other students who are being held at the Dilley facility in Texas,” read a statement from the Columbia Heights Public School District spokesperson. “We want all children to be released from detention centers and hope for the reunification of unjustly separated families. »
According to an analysis of records obtained by the Deportation Data Project, ICE placed approximately 3,800 minors in detention with immigrant families between January and October 2025. The number of children currently in immigration detention centers remains unclear.
The five-year-old and his father were detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, where most children detained with a parent are ultimately transferred. The detention center, managed by the private prison company CoreCivic, is intended to be less punitive than traditional prisons, with access to school and playgrounds for children.
However, Reps. Castro and Jasmine Crockett described appalling conditions at the detention center when they visited the preschooler and his father last week, saying they encountered children who were “mentally broken because of the trauma they are experiencing.”
Crockett said children at the detention center told him “we weren’t in school” even though facility staff said otherwise.
Conejo Arias told Texas officials that the child was often tired and did not eat well at the detention center, which houses about 1,100 people, according to Castro.
A lawyer for the family told CNN last month that the child and his father entered the United States legally, leaving Ecuador amid an economic situation, insecurity and unstable employment conditions. The lawyer also said the five-year-old and his father were going through a legal process to obtain status in the United States and their applications remained pending.
