The ICE capture of a 5-year-old boy in Minneapolis has caused outrage as the Trump administration’s immigration operation continues to escalate amid rising tensions following the fatal ICE shooting of Renée Good.
Liam Ramos, 5, is among four children reportedly detained by ICE from the same school district in recent weeks, according to The Washington Post. Ramos was taken into ICE custody on Tuesday, along with his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, after agents descended on their driveway just after the father and son arrived from Liam’s preschool.
The Columbia Heights Public Schools District accused ICE agents of using 5-year-old Liam as “bait” by having him knock on the door of his home to see if anyone else was inside. The district also claims that another adult living in the home, who was outside at the time, “begged the agents” to leave the child with them; however, the ICE agents refused.
Liam’s middle-school-aged brother returned home 20 minutes later to discover that his brother and father had been taken away. The father and son are now being held in San Antonio, Texas, by Homeland Security officials. A lawyer for the family says Liam and Arias are not U.S. citizens, but “have been following the legal process perfectly, from presenting themselves at the border to applying for asylum and waiting for the process to go through.”
Images of Liam wearing a blue fish hat during the ICE capture have sparked much outrage online from critics who describe this latest escalation by the Trump administration as cruel, particularly because Trump officials continue to claim they are only focusing their immigration enforcement on violent criminals.
“They kidnapped a 5-year-old. They held him captive. They used him as bait to try to lure more adults that ICE did not have the authority, did not a warrant to apprehend. Then they trafficked him across the country by himself. This is disgusting. This is lawlessness,” said Reecie Colbert, political analyst and host of Sirius XM’s “The Reecie Colbert Show.”
Colbert challenged the media to more accurately describe the “horrific, unconscionable actions that this white nationalist, lawless administration is doing.”
In a tearful video reaction, longtime organizer and strategist Brittany Packnett Cunningham decried, “If you can look at Liam and not see your child, then we’ve done the whole thing wrong. That could be my baby, that could be your baby.”
She compared the uncomfortable imagery of a 5-year-old child in ICE custody to the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd, which sparked the nationwide Black Lives Matter uprisings in 2020, and eventually, the election defeat of President Donald Trump during his first term in office.
“In 2020, when so many of you were moved in a brand new way, in a way that you weren’t about Michael Brown, in a way that you weren’t about Sandra Bland, in a way that you may not even have been about Breonna Taylor, but you were moved in a particular way, when you heard…George Floyd called for his mother, when you found yourself being moved and compelled toward racial justice in a totally different way than you had been before,” said Packnett Cunningham.
She continued, “So much so that you got out on the streets, that you examined your workplaces, that you thought critically about your vote, that you thought critically about the election in front of you, that you think critically about where to give your money, that you thought much more intentionally and acted much more intentionally about organizing…that’s the same thing that Liam deserves.”
