- Liam Conejo Ramos, father brought back to Minnesota by legislator.
- A federal judge had ordered their release from ICE detention in Texas.
- Democrats Demand Reforms After ICE Operations and Shootings.
Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father returned home to suburban Minneapolis after being arrested by U.S. immigration agents and detained at a detention center in Texas, a lawmaker said Sunday.
A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, whom immigration agents arrested during a raid in Minnesota.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, wrote in a social media post that he picked them up Saturday night at the detention center and drove them back to Minnesota on Sunday.
“Liam is home now. With his hat and his backpack,” Castro said. “We won’t stop until all the children and families come home.”
A photo that went viral last month shows Liam wearing a blue bunny hat in front of his house with federal agents nearby.
He was one of four students detained by immigration agents in a Minneapolis suburb, according to the Columbia Heights Public School District.
The Ecuadorian boy and his father, who entered the United States legally as asylum seekers, were being held at a detention center in Dilley, Texas.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery wrote in a ruling Saturday that the case originated in the government’s “ill-conceived and implemented pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
Biery, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, cited the Constitution’s requirement that an arrest warrant be based on a judge’s finding of probable cause for a crime.
“The use of ‘administrative warrants’ issued by immigration officials is called the fox guarding the henhouse,” he writes.
Democrats have called for reforms after large-scale crackdowns in Minnesota and other states, following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis involving ICE agents.
Those demands from Democratic lawmakers include mandatory body cameras, an end to roving patrols and a halt to the use of face masks.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security has been suspended as Republicans and Democrats continue to negotiate a DHS bill.
“We’ll talk about it in the near future,” President Donald Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday.
Some Republican mayors also believe that reforms are necessary. “We’re generally encouraged that the administration appears to be exploring this pivot,” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Mayors are “caught in a bit of an impossible situation” with the presence of federal immigration agents in cities, Holt said, adding that events in Minneapolis threaten to erode the trust that officials have built over time with city residents.
Holt spoke the day after Trump ordered DHS to refrain from dealing with protesters unless federal property was threatened or local officials requested help.
