Immigration Agents Detain 5-Year-Old Boy in Minnesota, Prompting Outrage

A photo showed a boy with an oversized hat and Spider-Man backpack being held next to a vehicle as his father was detained. A Homeland Security spokeswoman said the man had fled and left the child.

A 5-year-old boy wearing a Spider-Man backpack and an oversized hat was detained with his father by immigration authorities on Tuesday, one of four students recently apprehended in a suburban Minneapolis school district, school officials said.

The prekindergarten pupil, Liam Conejo Ramos, is pictured in a photo released by the school system as he stands next to a vehicle with an adult’s hand on his backpack. His father is not in sight. The image prompted outrage in the Twin Cities area, where many people have been angered since mid-December by the Trump administration’s surge in deportation operations.

“Why detain a 5-year-old?” Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of schools in Columbia Heights, Minn., asked at a news conference about the episode on Wednesday.

Exactly what happened during the arrest, on a snow-covered block in Columbia Heights, is in dispute. The small school district and the federal government have given conflicting accounts.

The boy and his father were taken to Dilley, Texas, outside San Antonio, where they are being held at an immigration detention center, according to Marc Prokosch, a lawyer working with the family. The boy and his father came to the United States from Ecuador in 2024, he said, and each has an active asylum claim.

“These are not illegal aliens. They came legally and are pursuing a legal pathway,” Mr. Prokosch said at a Thursday news conference.

The image of the child in custody prompted an outcry. Some residents asked sarcastically whether Liam was an example of the criminals the government has said it is trying to detain. The government sought to shift blame to the father, who they said was in the country illegally.

School district officials said the boy and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, had just arrived home when immigration officials detained them.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that when the agents sought to detain the father, he fled on foot and left Liam behind in the vehicle.

Ms. McLaughlin did not suggest that Mr. Conejo Arias had any criminal record, and he does not appear in any Minnesota criminal court records.

Ms. Stenvik, the district superintendent, said in a statement that another adult who lived in the family’s home had “begged” to care for Liam, but the federal agents refused to allow it.

Mary Granlund, the school board chair, who was there when the boy and his father were detained, said at the news conference on Thursday that she had heard an adult in the home say, “I will take the child, I will take the child.” She said she also offered to take Liam as a representative of the school.

Ms. McLaughlin, by contrast, said that agents had tried to get Liam’s mother to take the boy, but that she had “refused.” Ms. McLaughlin said Mr. Conejo Arias told federal agents that he wanted Liam to stay with him.

Ms. Granlund said Liam’s father was yelling at adults inside the home, “please do not open the door,” presumably because of fears the agents would apprehend others. School officials had previously accused immigration agents of making the child knock on the door of his home as “bait” so they could apprehend others, something that immigration officials denied.

In order to detain Liam against his will, agents would need probable cause to believe that he was in the country unlawfully, experts said, but they are allowed to keep the child with an arrested parent if the parent requests it.

“You definitely cannot arrest a child to use them as bait,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, a co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Vice President JD Vance, who was visiting Minneapolis on Thursday, noted that he had a 5-year-old son of his own, and defended the agent’s actions.

“What are they supposed to do?” he asked. “Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?”

School officials said that Liam was the fourth child in the district to be detained by immigration agents in the past two weeks. Two of them are high school students. The fourth is a 10-year-old girl who was apprehended with her mother on her way to school; both were flown to a detention center in Texas.

About 22,000 people live in Columbia Heights, a diverse city just north of Minneapolis with many immigrant residents. Federal agents have been present there constantly in recent weeks. The city’s public school district serves about 3,400 students in five schools.

Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been circling schools and following buses, Ms. Stenvik said. On Wednesday, an ICE vehicle drove onto school system property, but a member of the high school staff told the people inside to leave.

Talya Minsberg contributed reporting.

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