A 5-Year-Old and His Father Detained by ICE in Minnesota

Tue Feb 03 2026 15:57:29 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

In a troubling incident, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a five-year-old boy along with his father during an immigration operation in Minnesota. Community leaders express outrage over the event, questioning the reasoning behind such actions.

A five-year-old boy named Liam Ramos was detained alongside his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, by ICE officers in Minnesota. While the agency claims the father abandoned his son during the operation, community leaders are criticizing the decision to detain a young child. Advocates argue that the family, which came to the US seeking asylum, was not evading immigration officials. This incident fuels ongoing tensions around immigration enforcement in the area.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detained a five-year-old boy on Tuesday during an immigration enforcement operation, Minnesota school officials and the family's lawyer have said.

Pre-schooler Liam Ramos was with his father - named by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias - when Conejo Arias was approached by agents on his driveway.

In a statement posted on X, the DHS claimed, ICE did NOT target a child, stating they were conducting an operation against his father, categorized as an illegal alien who reportedly abandoned his son when agents arrived.

Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik posed the question, Why detain a five-year-old? You can't tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.

ICE maintained in a post on X that the child had not been detained. A criminal illegal alien abandoned his child as he fled from ICE officers, and our officers ensured the child was kept SAFE in the bitter cold, the agency explained. They said multiple attempts were made to get family members inside the house to take custody of the child, which were allegedly refused.

The lawyer for the family indicated that Liam and his father were being held at a detention center in Texas, with lawyers attempting to reach them. Prokosch mentioned that the family had entered the US in 2024 from Ecuador seeking asylum and were not eluding ICE.

School officials stated that at the time of detention, Liam had just returned home from pre-school.

The situation has escalated tensions in the community, as this incident is part of a broader trend of heightened immigration enforcement in Minnesota, which has involved the detention of multiple students in recent weeks.