As ICE continues its campaign of so-called immigration enforcement across the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro area, increasingly disturbing accusations are coming to light about the tactics being used, including allegations of using small children as bait.
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One of the most alarming incidents involves five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, despite contracting versions of events. Liam was reportedly apprehended by ICE agents in his suburban Minneapolis driveway as he returned home from school. Agents are accused of walking the kindergartner to the door of his home and allegedly demanded to know who was inside. When Liam’s father came to the door, he was reportedly detained.
An adult in the home reportedly begged officers to leave Liam behind, per ABC 7. Instead, ICE agents reportedly placed both the child and his father into their vehicles and took them away.
If this were an example of ICE apprehending a violent or dangerous criminal, the administration might attempt to justify the means.
Neighbors said that federal immigration officers used the toddler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door to his house so that his parents would answer, but the Department of Homeland Security called those claims an “abject lie.” It claimed his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, allegedly fled on foot and “abandoned” the boy in a running car in their driveway, the Associated Press reported.
According to Zena Stenvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights school district Liam attends, that is not the case. She stated publicly that Liam’s father has an active asylum case, no deportation order and no criminal record. “I have viewed the legal paperwork with my own eyes,” she claimed. Leading many folks to believe Liam was not rescued from danger, but he was leveraged.
School district staff reportedly later arrived at the home to support Liam’s older brother, a middle schooler, who returned from school to find his father and younger sibling gone. This should have been a moment for national reflection. Instead, it became another exercise in political distortion.
At a press conference, Vice President JD Vance spoke out about the incident, some say in an attempt to reframe the incident. “I’m a father of a five-year-old little boy,” he began, before insisting that ICE did not arrest a child, but rather detained a father who allegedly fled. “What are they supposed to do? Let the child freeze to death?,” he asked.
This framing does what it always does. It vilifies the victim, absolves the system and asks the public to accept cruelty as necessity.
Contrast Vance’s response with a statement from Kamala Harris: “Liam Ramos is just a baby. He should be at home with his family, not used as bait by ICE and held in a Texas detention center. I am outraged, and you should be too.”
This is the line in the sand. When the state allegedly begins to use children as leverage, the debate is no longer about policy. It is about humanity.
We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to this. Not when it is children. Not when it is families. Not when it is happening in our neighborhoods. No amount of spin can make this acceptable. And no society that claims to value human dignity should tolerate it.
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