A federal judge issued a scathing ruling Saturday ordering the release of a 5-year-old boy and his father from a Texas immigration detention facility by Tuesday, harshly condemning the Trump administration’s enforcement tactics as “ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented” in a case that has intensified national controversy over immigration policies targeting families with young children.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery, who sits in San Antonio and was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, directed that Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias must be freed from the Dilley, Texas family detention center where they have been held since their January 20 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights.
The judge’s extraordinary order characterized the case as having “its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” directly challenging the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities and methodologies.
Images of Liam wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack while surrounded by ICE officers sparked widespread outcry about the administration’s Minnesota immigration crackdown, joining the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti as flashpoints in escalating confrontation between federal enforcement operations and local communities resisting those tactics.
Biery had previously ruled that the boy and his father could not be removed from the United States, at least temporarily. Saturday’s release order represents a more definitive judicial intervention requiring their freedom from detention while legal proceedings continue.
The judge invoked foundational American documents and religious texts in his ruling, suggesting the Trump administration’s actions echo grievances enumerated by Thomas Jefferson against England’s King George in the Declaration of Independence. “Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence,” Biery wrote, specifically citing Jefferson’s complaints that the monarch “has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People” and “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”
Biery included in his ruling a photograph of Liam and quoted two biblical passages: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,'” and simply “Jesus wept”—the shortest verse in Christian scripture, evoking profound sorrow at human suffering.
The biblical and constitutional references represent an unusual judicial approach, signaling the depth of the judge’s concern about governmental treatment of vulnerable children and suggesting he views the case as raising fundamental questions about American values and constitutional governance.
Biery joins a Minnesota-based federal judge with conservative credentials who recently described ICE as a serial violator of court orders related to the enforcement crackdown, indicating that judicial skepticism about immigration enforcement tactics transcends ideological divisions and reflects concerns about lawfulness and constitutional compliance.
The circumstances surrounding Liam and Adrian’s January 20 detention remain intensely disputed, with neighbors and school officials offering accounts sharply contradicting the Department of Homeland Security’s narrative. This factual controversy mirrors patterns established in other high-profile Minnesota enforcement incidents where eyewitness accounts and video evidence have conflicted with official governmental explanations.
Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik told reporters that officers instructed Liam to knock on the door of his home to determine if other people were inside, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.” The father told the child’s mother, who was inside the residence, not to open the door, Stenvik recounted.
School Board Chair Mary Granlund disclosed that she personally told agents she could care for the boy, while school officials confirmed that other adults at the scene offered to assume responsibility for Liam but were ignored by enforcement personnel. A neighbor claimed to possess papers authorizing her to care for Liam on the parents’ behalf, yet agents allegedly disregarded this arrangement.
The Department of Homeland Security categorically rejected these accounts as an “abject lie.” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin asserted that “ICE did NOT target, arrest a child or use a child as ‘bait,'” claiming instead that “ICE law enforcement officers were the only people primarily concerned with the welfare of this child.”
McLaughlin maintained that Adrian fled on foot, abandoning Liam in a running vehicle in the driveway during freezing Minnesota winter conditions. Officers tried extensively to persuade the mother to take custody of the child and “even assured her she would NOT be taken into custody,” McLaughlin stated. She added that officers “abided by the father’s wishes to keep the child with him.”
Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino criticized what he characterized as a “false media narrative” during a Friday press conference. Marcos Charles, acting executive associate director of ICE enforcement and removal operations, faulted the father for “abandoning his child in the middle of winter in a vehicle,” explaining that one officer remained with Liam while others arrested Adrian.
Charles claimed his officers obtained food for the boy and “did everything they could to reunite him with his family,” but that “when we approached the door of his residence, the people inside refused to take him in and open the door.” He acknowledged not knowing what became of the child’s mother.
The government maintains that Adrian entered the United States illegally from Ecuador in December 2024. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has announced a target of 3,000 immigration arrests daily—the quota Judge Biery appeared to reference—confirmed this timeline.
The family’s attorney contends Adrian has a pending asylum claim allowing him to remain in the country. Both assertions can be simultaneously accurate under immigration law: the government may have initiated deportation proceedings after determining he entered illegally, but Adrian may have exercised his legal right to seek asylum, suspending removal until an immigration judge adjudicates his claim.
An online court summary confirms the case was filed December 17, 2024, and is assigned to the immigration court inside the Dilley detention center—a facility that has faced extensive criticism for conditions affecting detained families and children.
Family attorney Marc Prokosch stated Thursday that he assumed Liam and his father were in a family holding cell but had not established direct contact with them. “We’re looking at our legal options to see if we can free them either through some legal mechanisms or through moral pressure,” he explained at a press conference.
The Law Firm of Jennifer Scarborough, which assumed representation of the boy and family following the court order, issued a statement Saturday confirming work “to ensure a safe and timely reunion.” The firm expressed satisfaction that “the family will now be able to focus on being together and finding some peace after this traumatic ordeal.”
Texas Democratic Representatives Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett visited the detention facility Wednesday, observing Liam sleeping in his father’s arms. Adrian told the congressmen that Liam was frequently tired and not eating well at the facility housing approximately 1,100 people, Castro disclosed.
Detained families have reported severely deficient conditions at Dilley including worms in food, fighting for access to clean water, and inadequate medical care since the facility’s reopening last year. In December, an ICE report acknowledged holding approximately 400 children longer than the recommended 20-day limit.
Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel at Children’s Rights, visited Dilley last week and characterized current conditions as worse than ever. “The number of children had skyrocketed and significant numbers of children had been detained for over 100 days,” Welch observed. “Nearly every child we spoke to was sick.”
These firsthand accounts starkly contradict ICE official Charles’ assertions that people at family centers “get top-notch care. They have medical care. The food is good. They have learning services. They have church services available. They have recreation.”
Bovino defended family detention by comparing it to domestic law enforcement practices. “When U.S. citizens anywhere in the country are arrested and jailed by their local police, they get separated from their children,” he noted, adding: “I challenge any other law enforcement agency anywhere nationwide to show me the fantastic care that ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol provide children.”
He argued that if Liam wasn’t with his father, “he could have ended up in the custody of social services without a parent instead,” framing the detention as preferable to child welfare system placement.
The child’s immigration status remains a critical legal factor. ICE official Charles suggested Friday that the family entered the United States together, implying Liam is not a U.S.-born citizen and may be subject to deportation with one or both parents.
Trump border czar Tom Homan has repeatedly emphasized that parents of U.S.-born children face choices when deported: take children with them or leave them with relatives or other caregivers. “This is parenting 101. You can decide to take that child with you or you can decide to leave the child with a relative or another spouse,” Homan stated last year on CBS’ Face the Nation.
The Trump administration issued a “Detained Parents Directive” in July establishing that when minor children are encountered during ICE enforcement actions, ICE “should under no circumstances take custody of children or transport them.” However, the directive includes exemptions for situations where people could lose their immigration status.
The policy states that ICE should allow parents and guardians to make alternate care arrangements for children before detention, but does not specify procedures when parents request that children remain with them.
Neha Desai, managing director at Children’s Human Rights and Dignity at the National Center for Youth Law, clarified legal obligations: “If a parent is arrested while with their child, the government is not required to arrest the child, regardless of the child’s immigration status. When ICE detains a parent, its own policy requires them to allow time for arrangements to be made for the child’s care.”
The conflicting accounts of whether Adrian and Liam’s mother were given adequate opportunity to arrange alternative care before the child’s detention represents a factual dispute with significant legal and moral implications. If school officials and neighbors accurately describe events, ICE violated its own policies and used a kindergarten-aged child as an investigative tool. If DHS spokeswoman McLaughlin’s account is accurate, the father abandoned his son in dangerous winter conditions and the mother refused to accept custody when officers offered it.
The detention has become a national flashpoint symbolizing broader divisions over Trump administration immigration enforcement, joining other Minnesota incidents that have generated intense controversy. The deadly shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer just two weeks earlier—which witnesses characterized as blatant abuse of power while the government defended it as legitimate self-defense—established a pattern of radically divergent narratives about federal enforcement operations.
Judge Biery’s release order, due for implementation by Tuesday, will reunite Liam and Adrian while their immigration case proceeds. However, the broader questions raised by their detention—about appropriate treatment of young children during enforcement operations, the credibility of competing narratives from officials and community members, and the human cost of aggressive deportation quotas—will persist as political and legal controversies surrounding immigration enforcement continue.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the judge’s order or his characterization of immigration enforcement as ill-conceived, incompetently-implemented pursuit of daily deportation quotas requiring child traumatization.
The Associated Press
