Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old boy whose arrest two weeks ago in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents went around the world, returned home after being released on Saturday, a legislator reported on Sunday.
“Liam is already home, with his hat and his backpack,” he wrote in X Joaquin Castro, Democratic representative from Texas, next to a photograph of the child.
Liam and his Dad walked out of Dilley detention center last night. They should have never been there in the first place. Thanks to your voices and outcry, they are now free. pic.twitter.com/eUulSWBROn
— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) February 1, 2026
On January 20, Liam and his father were detained on the streets of Minneapolis in a raid carried out by immigration service (ICE) agents aimed at detaining and expelling undocumented immigrants.
You may also be interested in: ICE detains a 5-year-old boy when he returned home from school
This federal body is under the spotlight of controversy due to the wide scope with which it operates after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, especially due to the death of two protesters at the hands of two ICE agents in January in Minneapolis.
The photo of the boy at the time of his arrest, in which he appears scared, wearing a blue hat with rabbit ears and a backpack held by a silhouette dressed in black, shocked the world.
US Vice President JD Vance claimed that the boy was detained by ICE after his father, allegedly an illegal immigrant, tried to flee to avoid arrest.
Father and son spent 12 days in a detention center for migrant families in Texas, 1,800 kilometers away from this city in the northern state of Minnesota.
A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of both.
The magistrate stated in his order that “this matter has its origin in the implementation, poorly conceived and poorly executed by the Government, of daily expulsion quotas, even though this implies traumatizing the children.”
“It also appears that the Government ignores a historical American document called the Declaration of Independence,” wrote this Texas judge appointed by a Democratic president.
Following the magistrate’s decision, father and son were released on Saturday and Joaquín Castro, as he himself said, took them to Minnesota on Sunday morning.
“We will not stop until all the families, all the children, are back in their homes,” he said.
Leave a Reply