ICE Detains Five-Year-Old in Minneapolis

Tensions continue to escalate as ICE agents conduct targeted raids and detainments in the streets of Minnesota. Now, school officials in a Minneapolis suburb say ICE officials have “shaken” the community sense of safety by targeting students — most recently by detaining a five-year-old boy and his father, one of multiple children the agency has detained as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“We had an ICE vehicle drive onto our school property just two hours ago,” Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said at a Wednesday press conference. “ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our children. The sense of safety in our community and around our schools is shaken and our hearts are shattered.” 

According to Stenvik and reporting from local news station KARE11, ICE agents detained five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos on Tuesday, taking him from a running car outside of his home. His father, who the Department of Homeland Security later identified as Alexander Conejo Arias, was also detained. According to the family’s attorney Marc Prokosch, the two are currently being held at a detention center in Texas. Prokosch confirmed to The Washington Post that the family are not citizens, but said they are in the midst of an active asylum case and did not have deportation orders. 

Recent ICE raids have been followed by a the DHS celebrating arrests and detainments in public statements, many of which differ wildly from first-person accounts and witnesses. In the case of Alexander and Liam, reports from the family’s lawyer and school system say the five-year-old was used “as bait,” having him knock on the door to get anyone else in the house outside. In a statement published on social media, a spokesperson for DHS denied the allegations, instead claiming the young child was “abandoned” by his father and ICE agents stayed with him for his safety. 

The recent arrest comes just two weeks since ICE agents fatally shot Minneapolis mother Renee Good amid an altercation with protestors, skyrocketing tensions in the city and stoking national uproar over agents’ actions and training. In the days since, arrests have continued at a steady pace, including the detainment of children. According to Stenvik, Liam is the fourth student from the Columbia Heights Public Schools system to be arrested. Ella Sullivan, Liam’s preschool teacher, describes the young boy as kind and loving. “His classmates miss him,” she said at Wednesday’s press conference. “And all I want is for him to be safe and back here.”

Protests and neighborhood interventions have continued to escalate in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas, especially as ICE agents continue to ignore or blatantly disregard constitutionality and their own established protocols during detainments. The Associated Press reported Wednesday on an ICE memo authorizing officers to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, an apparent violation of the Fourth Amendment as well as previous ICE guidance.

ICE appears to be rewriting protocol around detaining children, as well. According to DHS, when a parent is detained, they are given the option to leave their child with a trusted adult or bring them into custody with them. But Stenvik and the family’s lawyer say that ICE agents wouldn’t leave the boy with someone in the home. There was a similar report two weeks ago when a 10-year-old was detained with her mother while on their way to school. According to CBS News, the girl called her father and said the agents were dropping her off at her school, but when he arrived, he was told both his wife and daughter had been detained. 

“Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do,” Prokosch said Wednesday. “So this is just cruelty.”