Images of Immigration and Customs Enforcement appearing to detain a 5-year-old boy in Minnesota have caused controversy as a massive immigration crackdown continues in the state. Supporters of the White House’s immigration efforts say ICE agents were making sure the boy was safe, while opponents argue the administration placed a child in custody.
Images and videos of the incident show a small child, later identified as Liam Conejo Ramos, in the middle of a federal immigration operation. In the viral photo, a man is holding Conjeo Ramos by the handle of his Spider-Man backpack. Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik told The Associated Press that agents took Conejo Ramos from a car idling outside his home after he returned from a day at preschool.
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Federal officials said ICE agents were searching for the boy’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias. They said he had run from agents after they stopped him. School officials said agents refused to leave the boy with another adult who lived in the home or with a school district official. Authorities later took the father and the child into custody and eventually transferred them to an immigration detention camp in Dilley, Texas, just outside San Antonio.
Stenvik told the AP that the father had told the mother not to come outside during the incident. At some point, agents had told the boy to knock on the door to see if anyone was home, Stenvik said, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”
She told CNN that she spoke to the mother following the ICE encounter and said she was visibly upset.
“I can’t even imagine as a mother myself how conflicted she must have been,” Stenvik said. “This is what she told me, seeing her husband standing in the driveway in handcuffs, saying, ‘Don’t open the door,’ and also hearing her little one.”
The Department of Homeland Security disputed claims that ICE had sought the boy.
“The child was ABANDONDED by his father, and the alleged mother REFUSED to take custody of her own child,” the agency wrote on X. “Our law enforcement took care of the child, got him McDonald’s and played him his favorite music to comfort him.”
Tricia McLaughlin, an agency spokesperson, said parents detained by ICE have the option for the child to come with them or have agents place them with another person of their choice.
Controversial conversation
Opponents of the Trump administration’s immigration efforts said ICE had, in fact, detained a preschooler, regardless of whether he was the target. They say agents had escalated the issue and were cruel for not allowing people there to take the boy.
“Why detain a 5-year-old?” Stenvik asked. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
This is Liam Ramos. He is 5 years old.⁰
— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) January 22, 2026
ICE snatched him and his father on the way home from school, then used him as bait to target his family.
A family who followed the rules. A child as bait. Their cruelty knows no end. pic.twitter.com/qKAwSt9axZ
School officials said Conejo Ramos wasn’t the only student ICE has placed into custody. Agents have detained at least three other students from Stenvik’s district in the past two weeks. The New York Times reports that two were high schoolers and the other was a 10-year-old girl who ICE detained as she was on her way to school with her mother.
Stenvik also said an ICE vehicle drove onto school grounds Wednesday but a school official told the people inside the vehicle to leave.
Supporters of the White House’s crackdowns say the father made the situation worse by running away. They said ICE agents were only with the boy to keep him safe. During a press conference in Minneapolis, Vice President JD Vance said agents had no option but to detain the child.
“Well, what are they supposed to do?” Vance said. “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?”
However, opponents push back on the claim that agents were only keeping the boy safe, since they transported him more than 1,200 miles to a detention center with his father. School officials also pushed back on the claim the father was illegally in the country, saying he had an active asylum case and no order of deportation.
What are conditions like at the detention facility?
Marc Prokosch, the family’s lawyer, said he believes both are in a family holding cell together. But he isn’t since he has had no “direct contact” with them, according to the AP.
Families have reported that children are malnourished, sick and under prolonged detentions at the facility, the AP reports. The chief legal counselor at the advocacy group Children’s Rights, Leecia Welch, visited the facility this month as part of a lawsuit focusing on the welfare of migrant children in federal custody.
She said the number of children in custody has “skyrocketed,” and authorities had kept children detained for more than 100 days. Welch also said disease was rampant at the facility.
“Nearly every child we spoke to was sick,” she said.
