ICE Detains Four Minneapolis Minors, Including A 5-Year-Old Boy They Used As “Bait”

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in major cities has altered the lives of countless families — including Renee Good and the 32 people who died in ICE custody in 2025, the Jackson family, the countless parents afraid to take their children to and from school. Then there are the nearly 75,000 people currently in detainment and facing deportation, and those who have been deported already, separating families across countries and continents.

In the past two weeks, ICE agents in Minneapolis have detained four minor students of the Columbia Heights Public School district, including 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was reportedly used as bait to draw his family out of their home, according to MPR News.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Columbia Heights superintendent Zena Stevnik told reporters masked agents “apprehended” Liam in his driveway Tuesday as he arrived home from preschool pickup with his father. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said “ICE did NOT target a child,” and that agents were trying to arrest Liam’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, who was “in the country illegally.” As agents approached the father and son in their driveway, Conejo Arias fled the scene, McLaughlin said.

“Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child, and was refused,” Stenvik said of what happened next. “Instead, the agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

Federal agents took both the boy and his father away. Liam’s mother and siblings were unaware of their whereabouts for the next 24 hours until Conejo Arias was able to call home from a detention center in Texas, according to a GoFundMe set up for the family.

But according to his school district’s leadership, Liam’s family has an active asylum case with no deportation orders — “I have viewed the legal paperwork with my own eyes,” Stenvik said — meaning they are following legal processes to gain citizenship.

“Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do, and so this is just cruelty,” said Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing the Ramos family, who confirmed they are currently going through the asylum application process.

On the same day Liam was detained, a 17-year-old high school student was also taken by armed, masked federal agents while on the way to school, according to Stevnik. Another 17-year-old was detained along with her mother at their home last week, and two weeks ago, a 10-year-old student and her mother were taken while on their way to her elementary school, Stevnik said. They remain in detention in Texas.

“During the arrest, the child called her father on the phone to tell him that ICE agents were bringing her to school. The father immediately came to the school to find that both his daughter and wife had been taken,” Stenvik said during the press conference. “ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our children. The sense of safety in our community and around our schools is shaken and our hearts are shattered.”

As a result, school absences have skyrocketed — nearly one third of students in her district have stayed home in recent weeks because they are scared, Stevnik said. Many other districts in the region have recorded 20% to 40% of their students as absent each day in the last two weeks, MPR News reports. Both the Minneapolis and St. Paul districts canceled classes for the remainder of the week as teachers prepare to transition large swaths of the student population to virtual learning.

Scary Mommy recently reported that ICE’s largest family detention center — the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) in Dilley, Texas — appears to be opening an on-site school for detained children, which critics say is a move to sanitize the fact that DHS routinely keeps children there longer than is legally permissible. A December 2025 court filing alleges that nearly 400 children were detained for more than 20 days in August and September alone last year, during which they were denied adequate medical care, access to phone calls and legal counsel, and edible food.

As of this reporting, it is unclear if Liam and his father are being held at the STFRC or a second, smaller family detention center in Karnes, Texas. When asked if 5-year-old Liam’s detainment was illegal, Prokosch told reporters, “Probably not, and that’s what’s going to make my job really difficult. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s moral. You know, yes, they may have the legal authority to detain a 5-year-old, but why?”