Federal immigration officers’ detention of a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy in Minnesota has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts, with school officials and the family’s attorney disputing the government’s account of what happened during the operation outside the family’s home.
Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said the officers instructed the boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, to knock on the door to his house so that his mother would answer, calling it “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.” Stenvik said the father told the mother inside the home not to open the door and that the agents would not leave the child with other adults who offered to help.
Stenvik and other adults described alternative arrangements they said were proposed at the scene. Mary Granlund, the school board chair for Columbia Heights, said she told agents she could take care of the boy, and a neighbor said she had papers authorizing her to take care of Liam on behalf of the parents.
Federal officials rejected that characterization. Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, “ICE did NOT target, arrest a child or use a child as ‘bait,’” adding that ICE officers were the only people primarily concerned with the child’s welfare. McLaughlin said the father abandoned the child and fled on foot, leaving Liam in a running vehicle in their driveway, and that officers tried extensively to get the mother to take custody while assuring her she “would NOT be taken her into custody.”
McLaughlin said officers “abided by the father’s wishes to keep the child with him.” The government account also diverged over what officials knew about the mother’s location, with McLaughlin’s statement and subsequent comments from ICE leaders centering on efforts to reunite the boy with his family.
At a news conference, Border Patrol Commander at Large Greg Bovino criticized what he described as a “false media narrative” about the case. Marcos Charles, acting executive associate director of ICE enforcement and removal operations, said the father abandoned his child “in the middle of winter in a vehicle,” and he said an officer stayed with the child while others arrested the father.
Charles said officers then got food for the boy and “did everything they could to reunite him with his family.” He also said that, when officers approached the door, “the people inside refused to take him in and open the door,” and that the father later requested that his child stay with him. Charles said he didn’t know what had become of the boy’s mother.
The father and son are now held at a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, near San Antonio. Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel at Children’s Rights, said she visited the facility last week and that “The number of children had skyrocketed and significant numbers of children had been detained for over 100 days.” Welch said, “Nearly every child we spoke to was sick,” and the story cited administration acknowledgment in December that about 400 children had faced extended detention.
Charles and Bovino also addressed comparisons to how U.S. citizens are handled if arrested by local police, and Charles said people in family centers “get top-notch care,” including medical care, food, learning services, church services and recreation. The family’s attorney, Marc Prokosch, said Thursday that he assumed Liam and the father were in a family holding cell but that he did not have direct contact with them. Prokosch said they were looking at legal options to free them and that he was considering “moral pressure” alongside legal mechanisms, and his office later said he was unavailable to comment.
The legal status of the father and the child is also central to the dispute. Federal officials said the father was in the U.S. illegally without offering details. Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, said he came illegally in December 2024, while the father’s attorney said he had a pending asylum claim that would allow him to stay in the country.
The story said an online court summary showed the case was filed on Dec. 17, 2024, and assigned to the immigration court inside the Dilley detention center. The article also described an administration directive issued last July, the “Detained Parents Directive,” saying ICE “should under no circumstances take custody of children or transport them” during encounters with minor children, with exemptions, and that it directs ICE to allow time for alternate care arrangements before detention.
The directive does not spell out what happens when parents want their child to remain with them, and Neha Desai of Children’s Human Rights and Dignity at the National Center for Youth Law said, “If a parent is arrested while with his child, the government is not required to arrest the child, regardless of the child’s immigration status,” and that ICE’s policy requires allowing time for arrangements for the child’s care. Tom Homan, the administration’s border czar, previously told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “This is parenting 101,” describing a choice for parents of U.S.-born children to take their children with them or leave them with relatives or another spouse.
The competing accounts have gained attention in the weeks after a Minneapolis shooting involving a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, which witnesses characterized as an abuse of power and which the government defended as self-defense.