A federal judge ordered the release of a 5-year-old boy and his father from immigration custody. Court documents show Judge Fred Biery of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas granted the release of Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son, Liam Conejo Ramos.
Biery quoted former President Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence numerous times in his ruling.
“Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation,” Biery wrote.
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Biery went on to quote the Fourth Amendment regarding unlawful search and seizures.
“Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster,” Biery wrote. “That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”
Images and videos of the incident show a small child, later identified as 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 the boy from a car idling outside his home after he returned from a day at preschool.
Federal officials said ICE agents were searching for the boy’s father. They said he had run from agents after they stopped him.
School district officials said agents refused to leave the boy with one of them, or another adult who lived in his home. 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.
The Department of Homeland Security disputed claims that ICE had sought the boy, and said he was abandoned by his father.
“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.”
