Federal immigration agents have come under scrutiny after allegations that a five-year-old boy in Minnesota was used to draw family members out of their home during a detention operation — claims that have sparked alarm among school officials and prompted a response from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent Zena Stenvik said masked ICE agents detained five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos on Tuesday as he returned home from school with his father. According to her account, officers removed the child from the vehicle and instructed him to knock on the front door to see if anyone else was inside.
“Why detain a five-year-old? You can’t tell me this child would be considered a violent criminal,” Stenvik told reporters on Wednesday.
She said another adult inside the home pleaded with agents to allow them to take care of the boy but was refused. “The agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock so they could check if anyone else was home — essentially using a five-year-old as bait,” she alleged.
Stenvik added that the family has an active asylum case and no deportation orders. “I have seen the legal paperwork myself,” she said.
The family’s lawyer, Marc Prokosch, said he believes they are being held at a family detention facility in Texas, though he acknowledged that the detention itself may be legally permissible. He warned, however, that it would make the family’s legal process more difficult.
School officials say the incident is not isolated. Over the past two weeks, three other students under 18 in the district have reportedly been detained in separate cases. In one instance, a 10-year-old girl was taken into custody with her mother while on the way to school. “By the end of the school day, they were already in a detention center in Texas,” Stenvik said.
She also claimed that ICE activity has intensified around schools. “Agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our children,” she said.
The impact has been immediate, district officials noted. Nearly one-third of students have stayed home due to fear, with some districts reporting absentee rates as high as 40%. Schools in Minneapolis and St Paul have cancelled in-person classes to prepare for large-scale virtual learning.
DHS denies allegations
The Department of Homeland Security has rejected claims that ICE targeted a child, saying the boy was not detained but had been abandoned during the arrest operation.
In a post on X, DHS said that on January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an Ecuadorian national described by the agency as an undocumented immigrant who had been released into the US under the Biden administration.
“As agents approached the driver, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias fled on foot — abandoning his child,” DHS said. “For the child’s safety, one ICE officer remained with the child while other officers pursued and apprehended Conejo Arias.”
The agency issued the statement in response to criticism from community leaders and lawmakers, including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who had condemned the reported detention of a five-year-old as “the worst of the worst.”
“Ice did not target a child,” DHS said. “The child was abandoned.”
