A federal judge today ordered the release of a 5-year-old boy and his father from immigration custody, condemning their removal from their suburban Minneapolis neighborhood as unconstitutional.
The image of Liam Conejo Ramos, wearing a Spider-Man backpack and an oversize fluffy blue winter hat as he was detained by officers in January, spurred outrage at a moment when many were already incensed by the Trump administration’s immigration tactics in Minnesota and elsewhere across the country.
The flood of immigration enforcement officers into Minneapolis, known as Operation Metro Surge, has led to mass demonstrations as well as the shooting deaths of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of federal agents.
In a blistering opinion ordering Liam’s release, Judge Fred Biery of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas condemned “the perfidious lust for unbridled power” and “the imposition of cruelty.”
The boy’s father, Adrian Conejo Arias, was also arrested, and the pair were taken to an immigration detention center outside San Antonio.
A lawyer for the family previously said in court filings that Conejo Arias, who is from Ecuador, had legally entered the country under U.S. guidelines for asylum. The Department of Homeland Security had charged that Conejo Arias had entered the country illegally in December 2024.
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In a statement, Jennifer Scarborough and four other attorneys who represent Liam and his father praised the ruling. They said they were now working to quickly reunite the family. “We are pleased that the family will now be able to focus on being together and finding some peace after this traumatic ordeal,” they wrote.
The Trump administration has said that Liam was not targeted or arrested but that Conejo Arias had asked that his son remain with him after he tried to flee from immigration agents. School officials have said that someone in the family home had, unsuccessfully, pleaded with agents to keep the child.
Biery, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, said both Liam and his father must be released from custody by Tuesday.
The brief but fiery ruling from Biery chastised the government’s “ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence” and called for “a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.”
At the bottom of his three-page ruling, he included the photo of Liam, standing in front of a car. He also cited two well-known passages from the New Testament — one that quotes Jesus as saying “let the little children come to me” and another that reads “Jesus wept.”
It was ordered, he wrote, “with a judicial finger in the constitutional dike.”
It was not clear whether the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, would appeal the order or take other steps.
Biery is one of many district court judges from across the country who have been calling out the administration’s conduct in increasingly stark terms, with opinions that appear to be written as much for the general public as for their colleagues on the bench.
He compared the government’s immigration crackdown with the “swarms of officers” sent by the British king “to harass our people,” which were among the offenses enumerated by the Declaration of Independence.
“‘We the people’ are hearing echos of that history,” he wrote.
The order does not address the immigration aspect of the case, with Biery noting that the pair might, “because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation.”
But, he added, “that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy” than the current one, which he characterized as the “ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
This past week, a delegation of Democratic lawmakers visited Conejo Arias in the detention center in Dilley, Texas, about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio. Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, who was part of the group, said that Conejo Arias told them Liam had been “very depressed” and hadn’t eaten well since their detention.
The 5-year-old is not the only child in Minnesota or elsewhere in the country with at least one family member who has been detained over immigration status. But the photo of Liam, coupled with a persistent fear of immigration agents detaining students and staff, has gripped many across the state and the school district where Liam attends class.
In a statement, the Columbia Heights School District said Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of schools in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, had spoken to Liam’s family, who had requested privacy.
“We want all children to be released from detention centers, and the reunification of families who have been unjustly separated,” the district said.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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