Judge orders 5-year-old and dad released from ICE detention : NPR
A canister of pepper spray thrown by Texas troopers flies toward protesters outside the South Texas Family Residential Center detention center where Liam Ramos and his father are being held in Dilley, Texas, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.
Eric Gay/AP
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Eric Gay/AP
SAN ANTONIO — A judge on Saturday ordered the U.S. government to release by Tuesday a 5-year-old boy and his father from a Texas detention center where they were taken after being arrested by immigration agents in a Minneapolis suburb last month.
Images of Liam Conejo Ramos, in a bunny hat and Spiderman backpack, surrounded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have sparked an even bigger outcry over President Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. It also resulted in a protest at the family detention center and a visit from two Democratic congressmen from Texas.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, appointed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, said in his ruling that “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.”
The same judge previously ruled that the boy and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, could not be removed from the United States, at least for now.
In his order Saturday, Biery said the government’s “obvious ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence,” suggesting the Trump administration’s actions echo those that author and future president Thomas Jefferson listed as grievances against England.
Biery also included in his decision a photo of Liam Conejo Ramos and references to two lines from the Bible: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for of such belongs the kingdom of heaven’ and ‘Jesus wept.’
An order for the release from detention of 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father, which included a photo of the boy and references to Bible verses under the signature of U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, is pictured Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026.
Sydney Schaefer/AP
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Sydney Schaefer/AP
Stephen Miller, White House policy chief, said the goal was 3,000 immigrant arrests per day. It is this figure that the judge seemed to describe as a “quota”.
Spokespeople for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Neighbors and school officials say federal immigration agents in Minnesota used the preschooler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door of his home so his mother would answer. The Department of Homeland Security called this description of the events a “abject lie.” The father fled on foot and left the boy in a moving vehicle in their driveway.
During the Jan. 28 visit with Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett, the boy slept in the arms of his father, who said Liam was often tired and did not eat well in the detention center housing about 1,100 people, according to Castro.
Detained families report poor conditions, such as worms in the food, struggles to get clean water and poor medical care at the detention center since it reopened last year. In December, a report filed by ICE acknowledged that they were detaining about 400 children beyond the recommended 20-day limit.
