Did ICE use a 5-year-old boy as ‘bait’ to draw family members out for detention in Minnesota? DHS responds

Federal immigration agents detained a five-year-old Minnesota schoolboy and allegedly used him to lure adults out of his home.

This made school officials worried about how children are being caught in aggressive enforcement operations near schools.

Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent Zena Stenvik said masked ICE agents detained 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos on Tuesday as he arrived home from school with his father. The agents then took the child from the car and instructed him to knock on his home’s door to check if anyone else was inside.




“Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Stenvik told reporters on Wednesday.

She said another adult at the home begged agents to let him take care of the child, but was refused.

She said the ICE agents ordered the 5-year-old to do certain things: “The agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

Both Liam and his father were taken away and later sent to Texas. According to Stenvik, the family has an active asylum case and no deportation orders. “I have viewed the legal paperwork with my own eyes,” she said.

Marc Prokosch, the family’s lawyer, said he was unsure of their exact location but believed they were being held in a family detention facility in Texas, but clarified that the detention is likely legal and will make the job more difficult.

District officials say Liam is not the only child affected. Over the past two weeks, three other students under 18 have been detained in separate incidents. One 10-year-old girl was taken with her mother while travelling to school. “By the end of the school day, they were already in a detention center in Texas,” Stenvik said.

“ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our children,” Stenvik said.

The impact has been immediate. Nearly one-third of students in the district have stayed home out of fear. Several districts report absentee rates of up to 40 per cent. Minneapolis and St Paul schools have cancelled classes to prepare for large-scale virtual learning.

DHS responds

The Homeland Security denied targeting any child and said the boy was abandoned to start with

In a post on X, the agency said: "On January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias an illegal alien from Ecuador who was RELEASED into the U.S. by the Biden administration."

DHS said Adrian had left his 5-year-old child and escaped, so an ICE agent tended to him: "As agents approached the driver Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled on foot—abandoning his child. For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias."

The federal agency was replying to the Somali leader and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, claiming the same that ICE agents detained a 5-year-old, calling it “the worst of the worst.”