On Friday, high-ranking officials from the Department of Homeland Security responded to claims circulating online regarding a 5-year-old boy allegedly being used as “bait” to apprehend his father in Minnesota earlier this week. The boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, was reportedly left in a car by his father, an undocumented immigrant, during a targeted operation by federal agents.
ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Director Marcos Charles mentioned that Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias fled on foot, abandoning his son. “One of the officers stayed with the child while the others took the father into custody,” Charles explained. Later, when agents went to the boy’s residence, no one answered the door. He noted that the boy’s father eventually asked if they could be detained together.
Currently, both the father and son are in an ICE facility in Texas. According to DHS officials, Arias is an Ecuadorian national who was living in the U.S. illegally after being released under the Biden administration.
The DHS strongly countered statements made by Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stevic, who had claimed that ICE was essentially using the young boy as bait when officers arrived at her home. She also expressed that the child’s father had instructed the mother not to open the door.
“Why would you detain a five-year-old?” she questioned, pointing out that the child shouldn’t be considered a violent offender.
Meanwhile, anti-ICE activists and certain Democratic figures are highlighting this case as part of their broader opposition to President Trump’s immigration policies, especially in Minnesota. The Democratic National Committee even went so far as to assert online that ICE had arrested the boy as he returned home from preschool and attempted to use him in their operations. They described him as a “bright young student” and criticized the situation as inhumane.
