Detention of Liam Conejo Ramos
| Detention of Liam Conejo Ramos | |
|---|---|
| Part of Operation Metro Surge | |
Liam with his father after having been released | |
| Location | Columbia Heights, Minnesota, United States Dilley Immigration Processing Center, Texas, United States |
| Date | January 20, 2026 |
Attack type | Detention of a child |
| Victim | Liam Conejo Ramos |
| Perpetrators | Agent(s) from the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement |
| Motive | Use of Conejo Ramos as "bait" to detain his parents, who are asylum seekers. |
| Verdict | Federal Judge Fred Biery orders Liam and his father be released from detention on January 31, 2026. |
| Part of a series on the |
| Immigration policy of the second Trump administration |
|---|
On January 20, 2026, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos, a five-year-old boy, on his walk home from school in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, amid the Operation Metro Surge deployment to the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. The child and his father Adrian Conejo Arias each had an active claim for asylum in the United States and were arrested in their driveway. According to witness statements and the family's attorney, there were multiple adults available to take custody of Liam, but ICE arrested him anyway.
According to Spain's El País newspaper, "Images of [Conejo Ramos], wearing his blue hat and carrying a Spider-Man backpack, guarded by federal agents, instantly became a symbol of the indiscriminate nature of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in the United States".