Witnesses say they begged ICE agents not to detain Minnesota 5-year-old after father's arrest
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Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents refused to allow 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos to stay at his Columbia Heights home with family after being detained, observers said, despite people in the home, neighbors and school officials begging them to do so.
Those who saw the federal agents detain Liam Tuesday pushed back against claims this week by ICE and Vice President JD Vance that the child was abandoned by his family after the boy and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were detained on their way home from school.
Neighbors and Columbia Heights school officials say they pleaded with agents to let the child enter the home to join his mother or to stay with a neighbor or school leader after agents took the father into custody.
They also say that they did not see Conejo Arias flee the scene and leave his son in the cold as ICE officials maintain.
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“There was ample opportunity to be able to safely hand that child off to adults,” said Mary Granlund, chair of the Columbia Heights School Board who said she was at the scene and among those who offered to take Liam to his family or back to school.
“There was another adult who lived in the home that was there saying, ‘I will take the child. I will take the child.’ Somebody else was yelling … that I was there and said, ‘School is here. They can take the child. You don't have to take them.’ And mom was there. She saw (through) the window, and dad was yelling, ‘Please do not open the door!’”
ICE officials say the father and son are together at an ICE residential family facility in Texas. Marc Prokosch, the lawyer representing Liam and his dad, said he had still not had direct contact with them.
ICE says the father is in the country illegally but Prokosch says that’s not the case.
‘What are they supposed to do?’
The story of Liam and his family has gripped the Twin Cities and the nation the past few days as images of the small boy flanked by agents circulated online.
The initial report by local Columbia Heights officials that Liam was directed to knock on his door to get his family outside before being taken away with his father brought a strong response from the federal government.
“ICE did NOT target a child. The child was ABANDONED,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote on social media Thursday. The post added that the child’s father fled on foot “abandoning his child” before being apprehended by ICE officers.
“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates,” DHS added in its social media post.
Vance also defended federal agents’ actions.
“When they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran” and family members in the house refused to let him in, Vance told reporters during a visit to Minneapolis Thursday.
“So the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do?” Vance added. “Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?”
People on the scene, though, say that’s not what happened and that there were more options than leaving the boy outside or detaining him.
Granlund and Columbia Heights superintendent Zena Stenvik said it made sense to them why Liam’s father would tell his mother not to open the door when Liam knocked.
“It's been, unfortunately, over the last few weeks, pretty common knowledge about not opening doors because they're (ICE) pushing their way in,” Stenvik said Thursday. “I'm sure you've all seen multiple examples of like … tearing down doors, which is something that we had happen in Columbia Heights today at a home of five of our children.”
Rachel James, a Columbia Heights City Council member, said she called 911 and asked local police to come to the scene where Conejo Arias was detained.
Columbia Heights police Chief Matt Markham said ICE agents had already left with Liam and his dad by the time an officer from his department arrived.
He and James said they’ve been trying to understand why agents would take Liam with them when detaining his father.
“We would never, ever take a child to jail with a parent,” Markham said. “If there's a young child with a parent that we had to arrest for whatever scenario, yeah, we would go through child protection or another family member.”
“When it comes to children, we're very, very different (from ICE),” Markham added. “I wonder about why Anoka County Child Protection is not involved in (these) cases. I'm not aware of them getting reports sent to them or being involved, and this is their specialty to make sure children are cared for and they’re with proper guardianship,” he added. “I don't know why that's not happening.”
‘Inhumane and unacceptable’
On Thursday, Marcos Charles, leader of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, said Conejo Arias requested that his son stay with him and that agents took care of Liam after the father’s arrest.
Charles said agents did “everything they could to reunite him with his family” but they “refused to open the door and take him back.”
Eyewitnesses say they did not see Liam’s father run away, although none of the people who spoke to MPR News said they saw the moment of his arrest.
James, the Columbia Heights City Council member, lives in the same neighborhood as Liam and his family. She arrived at the Arias home shortly after the father had been arrested.
“When I pulled up, he was already standing very still and calmly next to his vehicle in his driveway with agents around him,” James said.
Marc Prokosch, the lawyer representing Liam and his dad, confirmed they are being held at the family detention center in Dilley, Texas.
“Detention of families, parents, children who pose no flight risk, no danger to the community, is simply inhumane and unacceptable,” he said.
“Family detention is harmful to children and their families,” he added. “It inflicts mental health trauma, subjects people to inadequate medical care, and prevents them from accessing legal counsel. That's why they were flown down to Texas.”
Charles, the ICE enforcement official, told reporters that the family “came across as a family unit illegally.” He said he wasn’t sure of the date.
Asked if the father had a criminal record, Charles told a reporter he’d get back to him but said, “he was in the U.S. illegally and I believe he’d been ordered removed.”
Asked if ICE had been in contact with Liam’s mother, he said, “we have not encountered the mother as of this time.”
Prokosch said that Liam and his dad entered the country legally using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection app at the Brownsville border crossing. He also said the family had no criminal record in Minnesota and no order of deportation.
“Our laws are clear. If you express a fear of returning to your home country, you have the right to a credible fear screening, and if you pass the credible fear screening, you have a right to pursue your asylum claim before an immigration judge, and that's where we are at,” he said.
“We are in the process of pursuing our asylum claim. Being detained impedes their ability to work with their attorneys.”
