Lawsmakers visited a detained 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father at a Texas federal detention center Wednesday, drawing fresh attention to a case that has fueled Democrats’ criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Democratic U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett met the boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, near San Antonio, according to Castro.
Castro said the meeting took place for about 30 minutes in a courtroom inside the facility. Outside the center, Texas state police confronted protesters who demonstrated in support of the detainees inside. The visit was part of Democrats’ midterm-election-year effort to conduct congressional oversight and highlight what they describe as the consequences of the administration’s immigration enforcement, including a crackdown that has drawn major protests in Minneapolis.
Castro later spoke during a news conference and said Liam’s father reported that the boy was sleeping a lot, asking about his mom and his classmates, and wanting to go back to school. The father also described the child’s concerns about his family and education during the meeting, Castro said.
Castro also used the encounter to press President Donald Trump to order the boy’s release. “I would ask President Trump, who himself has grandkids who are of the age of some of the kids we met with today, to think of what it would be like for his grandkids to be behind bars,” Castro said during the news conference. He and other Democrats called for Liam and other detainees to be released.
Crockett, who is seeking her party’s nomination for U.S. Senate, said Wednesday that lawmakers met multiple children at the facility and that the kids told them they were not getting an education. She said lawmakers were told that detainees could not be held there if they had a criminal record, and she added, “We are supposed to be better than this.”
The detainees’ case has been tied to a wider Minneapolis operation in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Liam and his father into custody on Jan. 20. A widely circulated photo of the boy—wearing a blue winter hat and a Spider-Man backpack—drew intense public reaction. Castro described the child as “emblematic of the monstrosity of the ICE system and the detention system,” according to the AP report.
The broader conflict over the operation has included competing accounts of how the child was detained. Neighbors and school officials said federal immigration officers used the preschooler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door to his house so his mother would answer. The Department of Homeland Security called that account an “abject lie,” saying the father fled on foot and left the boy in a running vehicle in their driveway.
In court, a federal judge issued a temporary order on Monday that prohibited the Trump administration from removing Ramos and Arias from the United States while their detention is challenged. The AP report also said Democrats have criticized the administration’s lack of access to ICE facilities. Minnesota Reps. Angie Craig, Kelly Morrison and Ilhan Omar were denied access to detainees at a federal building outside Minneapolis on Jan. 10, and the administration said they did not comply with a policy requiring seven days’ notice.
Texas officials said the confrontation outside the facility escalated when protesters moved closer. The Texas Department of Public Safety said officers arrested two people and used pepper balls after protesters did not heed orders to disperse, adding that demonstrators breached a protest area and spit on officers. Protesters chanted and carried signs, including “Children are not criminals!” and some banged drums before officers arrived from a school bus and directed the crowd to move back, according to the AP report.
Democrats also have linked the case to broader disputes over immigration enforcement and funding. Castro, a prominent member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a video of running a “lawless” immigration enforcement operation that he described as a “bounty hunter organization.” Crockett and her Senate primary rival, state Rep. James Talarico, have called for Noem’s impeachment, and Crockett voted against a pending appropriations bill that would fund Noem’s department and the immigration enforcement agencies under it, the AP report said.