A Preschooler was Taken Away by ICE
By Cecilia Fountain
Nice and cozy in a blue knit bunny hat and plaid coat, Liam Conejo Ramos a 5 year old boy was huddled around ICE agents and brought into federal custody with his father on January 20th, 2026. In the driveway of their home in Minneapolis, his Spiderman backpack was taken by a masked federal agent and put in a black SUV to be put on a plane with his father to a family detention facility in Texas. What exactly led the immigration and customs enforcement to take him and his father more than 1,300 miles away from his home is still under debate. Reigniting outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown and if it’s really helping. The worst part of it all is that Liam is not the first. He is the 4th child in his school district to be operated by ICE in the past 2 weeks. Liam’s story comes at a frightening time, here is the information we know about it so far.
Liam and his family are from Ecuador and made their way to the states to seek asylum. This happened in Texas in December 2024, when they brought themselves to Border Control to fill out the legal processes to apply for asylum. They showed up to their court hearing and posed no flight risk, and had the access of asylum granted to them. However, even though they were in the process of applying for their U.S. Citizenship, they were still detained by ICE because they were not yet recognized under the law as legal citizens. The Department of Homeland Security was in pursuit of only Liam’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias when Liam was swept up in the mix calling him an “Illegal alien”. The family came to America because of economic issues hoping for a better life.
3 days after the arrest homeland security officials have not found any potential criminal history and no association with criminal organizations. In Ecuador the family has no criminal history and has never worked with any Ecuadorian criminal operations.
This creates worsened conflict because the Trump administration has repeatedly stated that they are only targeting “Valiant criminals” and the,“worst of the worst” during its ICE raid and immigration sweeps. Homeland security officials have tried to argue by acknowledging that immigrants that may not be associated with criminals might be swept up in operations.
One of the main controversies of this arrest though is why Liam is still in custody and not at home with his mother. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have stated that Liams, “alleged mother REFUSED to take custody of her own child” despite “multiple attempts to get the mother inside the house to take custody of her child.”. Even though Liam’s mother (who was pregnant and had a teenage son to take care of) has repeatedly tried to tell them that she was terrified to even walk outside when she saw the agents outside her door. Her neighbors even advised her not to come out saying, “ICE agents were trying to use the baby to get her to come out of her house”. ICE had disputed this claim, declaring they have never “used a child as bait”. DHS also claims that the father abandoned his son when being obtained and the agents were taking care of the child.
To this day Liam and his father are being held in the Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, an ICE facility for family. They have a gym, classroom, and library but the conditions have been reported to be subpar, and underkept. There is still converse about any family held there, especially children who have been uprooted from their home and forced to be held in a detention center to no fault of their own.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/23/us/liam-conejo-ramos-ice-wwk
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/liam-ramos-father-joaquin-castro-ice-visit
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8jk5335vdo