Recently, Granlund was picking up her son from the high school when she heard that ICE had descended on a nearby apartment complex, one that is home to many students in the district. She ran with some teachers, blowing their whistles, to the parking lot where ICE agents had been spotted. In a video of the incident, about a half-dozen women, unarmed and dressed for the classroom, square off against at least four masked agents of the federal government, their chests puffed out under bulky tactical gear. The women scream at ICE to get out, that they are not welcome in their community. “Are your moms proud of you?” one calls out. “Do they know what you do? Do they know that you separate families?”
In the video, the ICE guys mill about, menacing yet uncertain. One of them has fashioned a sinister balaclava out of his cap and neck gaiter. “You cos-patriot fucking losers, Jesus Christ, go!” a woman yells. As the ICE agents fade back into their vehicles, one of them dawdles as he gets into a passenger seat, making sure to position his gun so that the women can see it before he shuts the door. “Ooh, you have a fucking gun?” one of the women taunts him. “Is your penis that small?”
The ICE agents eventually did leave, empty-handed. Less than a week later, another encounter on the school run had a different outcome. On January 20th, Granlund was again on her way to pick up her kids when she drove past a familiar sight: a cluster of parked cars, people honking and screaming and blowing whistles. She got out of her car and ran toward the commotion, her school-board lanyard in hand. “The school is here!” someone called out. The abduction of Liam Conejo Ramos and his father—both of whom have pending asylum claims—was unfolding in the driveway of the family’s home, on a street where Granlund often walks her dog.
“I kept screaming that I could take him,” Granlund said. “It happens all the time that parents miss the bus stop because they had to work late, they got caught in traffic, whatever, and our policy is to bring the kid back to school and they can wait there.” As horrifying as the scene in the driveway was, Granlund could instantly calculate her most useful place in it: she’s the lady who looks after the boy whose father is unexpectedly unavailable. She went on, “I’ve had a background check”—meaning that she was vetted to care for kids—“and I knew I could keep Liam physically safe. There was no reason—I was saying, ‘I’m from the school; I can take him.’ And they took him, and I’m, like, What—where did—where did he go? They took him. They took Liam.”
Detainees at the Dilley facility have reported moldy food, unclean drinking water, unsanitary living conditions, and inadequate medical care; Liam has a persistent fever, is lethargic, and is not eating well, Stenvik told me. The Flores Settlement Agreement, which sets minimal standards for children in federal custody, requires that they be placed in the “least restrictive” setting according to their age and needs. “But there is no reason for ICE to detain Liam to begin with,” Ann Garcia, a senior staff attorney at the National Immigration Project, said. “Liam and his family have pending asylum applications. They have done nothing contrary to their immigration obligations that would warrant any detention, especially when Liam is quickly decompensating in detention. The ‘least restrictive setting’ for Liam is at home with his family in Minneapolis.”
On January 28th, three U.S. representatives from Texas, including Joaquin Castro, visited the Dilley facility, and afterward expressed concerns about the mental and physical health of the children who are trapped there. Castro also reported that ICE had taken Liam’s bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack, and that Liam is hoping to get them back.
Columbia Heights was as prepared for an immigration crackdown as could be reasonably expected of any community or school system—but there has been nothing reasonable about the ICE terror campaign. After the 2024 election of Donald Trump, who promised mass deportations, the school district partnered with a local law firm to offer parents free informational sessions in English and Spanish on immigration rights. “We were all very prepared for what to do if—naïvely, in my imagination—an ICE agent came to the door with a signed judicial warrant,” Stenvik said. “That’s not at all what is happening. This is indiscriminate.”
