Five-year-old boy and his dad who were seized by ICE return home after judge demanded their release

A five-year-old boy and his father, who were detained by federal immigration agents and taken to an ICE facility in Texas, have returned to Minneapolis after a federal judge ordered their release.

Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro shared images of Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, leaving the South Texas Family Residential Center early Sunday morning.

He also shared images of Liam wearing the same blue cap he wore in a now-viral image of him standing on his frozen driveway with a Spider-Man backpack as federal officers arrested his father.

“I picked them up last night and escorted them back to Minnesota this morning,” Castro wrote Sunday. “Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack. Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam. We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”

Liam and his dad were snatched by federal officers from the driveway of their home in Minneapolis on January 20 and brought to an ICE facility in Texas, where the preschooler was reportedly sick and asking for his mother, according to family and lawmakers who visited him.

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Neighbors and school officials claim the federal officers used Liam as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door of his house so that his mother would answer. The Department of Homeland Security has called that description of events an “abject lie.”

Castro, a Texas Democrat, wrote a letter to Liam on the plane back to Minnesota telling him that he “moved the world.”

“Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t your home. America became the most powerful, prosperous nation on earth because of immigrants not in spite of them.”

Video shared by ABC News showed Liam receiving his wings in the cockpit of the flight back to Minneapolis.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, welcomed Liam back home on social media, writing, “A 5-year-old should be in school and with family — not in detention. I’m relieved he and his family are finally headed back to Minnesota.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar, also a Minnesota Democrat, also noted Liam’s return to Minneapolis on social media.

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“Liam is home now and we are grateful to @JoaquinCastro for traveling to Minneapolis with him and his dad. Welcome home Liam,” she wrote.

The father and son’s return to Minneapolis followed a blistering court order for their release, as District Judge Fred Biery delivered a brutal assessment of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign and an “ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas” that appears to require “traumatizing children.”

Biery signed his three-page order with the viral image of Liam and two Bible verses below it: Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35.

The judge condemned the administration’s apparent “ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence” and Thomas Jefferson’s warnings against “a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation.”

The verse from Matthew states roughly that “Jesus said, ’Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” while the verse from John is “Jesus wept.”

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Liam’s image has become emblematic of sweeping arrests in Minneapolis, which come amidst Trump’s aggressive mass deportation efforts and a surge of federal officers into the city, drawing several lawsuits and demonstrations across the country.

Federal courts in the state are swimming in cases alleging unlawful arrests and abusive and illegal use of force from immigrants and citizens alike swept up in the dragnet.

Liam is among at least seven Minneapolis-area children detained by federal agents in recent days in scenes that mirrored arrests during other immigration enforcement operations around the country, interrupting schools and putting families, teachers and administrators on edge as they brace for officers showing up on campus and at home.

Days after Liam and his father were detained, a two-year-old girl and her father were brought into federal custody after immigration officers broke the man’s car window and arrested them on their way home from the grocery store, according to Minneapolis officials.

Homeland Security has characterized Liam’s father as an “illegal alien,” though the family’s attorney, Marc Prokosch, told reporters this month that the Ecuadorian family “came legally and are pursuing a legal pathway” and seeking asylum in the United States.

With reporting by Alex Woodward