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A 5-year-old boy and his father detained by immigration officers in Minnesota and held in Texas have been released following a judge’s order. They have returned to Minnesota, according to the office of Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro.
Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias were detained in a Minneapolis suburb on Jan. 20. They were taken to a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.
Katherine Schneider, a spokesperson for the Democratic congress member, confirmed the two had arrived home.
Images of the young boy wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack and surrounded by immigration officers drew outrage about the Trump administration’s crackdown in Minneapolis.
On Saturday, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who sits in San Antonio and was appointed by former U.S. president Bill Clinton, said in his ruling “the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
At a news conference Thursday afternoon alongside the lawyer for Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old detained by ICE in a Minneapolis suburb, school board chair Mary Granlund got emotional speaking about the anxiety she says she has seen in schools since immigration agents arrived in the area.
Neighbours and school officials said federal immigration officers used the preschooler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door to his house so that his mother would answer.
The Department of Homeland Security has called that description of events an “abject lie,” instead saying the father fled on foot and left the boy in a running vehicle in their driveway.
