(Photo courtesy of Ali Daniels/AP Photo) “5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos”
Makayla Mahoney
Connector Editor
On Sunday, Feb. 1, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Alexander were released from an ICE processing center after being held there for more than a week. Their release comes after days of national outrage as a picture of the preschooler went viral online, showing him wearing his Spider-Man backpack and bunny hat as he is surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery court ordered their release on Saturday, Jan. 31, with their departure from Dilley Immigration Processing Center following the next day.
Liam and his father were first detained by ICE on Tuesday, Jan. 20, when arriving home from Liam’s preschool in Minneapolis. They were immediately surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers upon pulling into their driveway. The two were put into custody and sent to a processing center in Dilley, Texas.
Adrian Alexander Conejo Ramos moved to the U.S. from Ecuador in 2024, applying for asylum upon legal entry. While there was no order for his deportation, the Department of Homeland Security claims that Adrian was an “illegal alien”, leading to his detainment on Jan. 20.
The department further stated that Adrian had left Liam in the car as he attempted to flee officers. They defended taking the five-year-old into custody as there was no one at home willing to take him, however officials from Liam’s school denied that this was the case and that an adult at their home was denied custody of Liam after begging officers to let him go.
Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Liam attends preschool, stated that he was at least the fourth child to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the past month.
Minneapolis has been a hotspot on the topic of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of I.C.E officers making national news. Thousands continue to take to the city streets to protest the detainment of Minneapolis residents by ICE
According to The Guardian, there have been 23,960 arrests within the past two weeks by officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These large numbers of arrests were the result of a promise made by President Trump in his run for president in 2024.
In May of 2025, White House Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller told Fox News “We are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every day.” Officials at the White House have since backtracked on this statement, however ICE’s daily “quota” is still under question as people continue to face daily raids within their cities.
The targeted arrest of Adrian Alexander and Liam Conejo Ramos may come from the Trump administration’s new policy practices targeting those who have entered the country within the past two years. Eileen Morrison, an adjunct professor of immigration law at UMass Lowell explains:
“Under past administrations, the practice was to say that if someone had been here for more than six months, they would need to go before an immigration judge and could not be put in expedited removal. However, during the Trump administration, they have re-interpreted it to mean that if someone has been here for less than 2 years, that they believe that they can just go into this expedited removal process and never go to immigration court and never see an immigration judge.”
In the case of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detaining a five-year-old child, she continues, “Cruelty is the point. Part of the administration’s goal is to be so cruel that it deters people from trying to come to the United States.”
With the residents of Minneapolis continuing to heal from the numerous deaths and deportations in their neighborhoods, they still celebrate the return home for Liam and his father and continue to hope for normalcy and the release of more families affected by ICE.
