Trump agents detain a five-year-old boy as he returns from school

BarcelonaDonald Trump's intimidation campaign against the immigrant population It has no limits: it doesn't stop for people with legal status, it ignores the lack of warrants, and apparently, it has no age limit either. Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a five-year-old boy at the entrance to his home in the Minneapolis metropolitan area as he returned from kindergarten. The boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, has been held at an immigration and customs enforcement facility in Texas with his father since Tuesday, the day they were arrested.

After detaining the father, masked federal agents made the boy get out of the car and forced him to stand with his back to the wheel while they arrested him, in an image that has gone viral. Liam was wearing a hat with plush ears and a Spiderman backpack. According to several witnesses, ICE wanted to use the boy as bait to arrest his mother, who was inside the house.

The boy and his family are originally from Ecuador and presented themselves to Texas border agents in December 2024 to request asylum, according to the family's attorney, Marc Prokosch, during a press conference Thursday night. "They are not illegal aliens," Prokosch explained. "They came properly. They came legally, and they are following a legal path."

This is the fourth detention of a minor this week, according to Columbia Heights Public School District Superintendent Zena Stenvik, who says ICE's actions are "traumatizing" children in the neighborhood. Armed and masked agents also reportedly detained two 17-year-olds and a 10-year-old boy, all three in this school district. "ICE agents have been prowling our neighborhoods, surrounding our schools, following our buses, entering our parking lots multiple times, and taking our children," Stenvik said.

The Department of Homeland Security has stated that Liam's father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, was in the country illegally, without providing further details. "ICE does not and has never used the child as bait. The child was ABANDONED," Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted on X on Thursday.

With carte blanche

These arrests are part of the indiscriminate campaign of repression against migrants launched by the Trump administration: in Minneapolis alone, a traditionally Democratic state where ICE shot and killed US citizen Renee Good on January 7, Approximately 3,000 federal agents have been deployedWith carte blanche, heavily armed agents have pursued citizens they consider suspicious of violating immigration law, while some citizens have organized observation patrols to record police violations.

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security has redefined immigration priorities and made every undocumented immigrant a target for detention and deportation. To this end, it has granted ICE unprecedented powers. Now the White House authorizes agents to enter homes without a warrant, allowing them to forcibly enter houses using only administrative orders, without a judge's approval. The "sensitive locations" policy, which prohibited arrests in schools, hospitals, and places of worship, has also been reversed. And on Wednesday, the ban on agents using pepper spray to disperse protesters in Minnesota was also lifted.

"What were they supposed to do?"

US Vice President JD Vance rallied behind the agency, stating that the police were pursuing Liam's father; but since he fled, they had no choice but to take the abandoned child. "What were they supposed to do? Were they supposed to let a five-year-old boy freeze to death? Weren't they supposed to arrest an illegal immigrant?" Vance insisted at a press conference during a visit to Minneapolis to show his support for ICE. Witnesses offer a different account: school staff, an adult living in the family home, and neighbors all offered to take the child, but ICE officials refused. School staff can assume custody of a minor in the absence of their legal guardian.