In brief
A US District Judge has ordered the release of a five-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, and his father from an immigration detention center in Texas. The judge condemned their detention as part of a 'perfidious lust for unbridled power', sparking widespread outrage. The child and his father, who were seeking asylum from Ecuador, were detained during an operation aimed at the father, described by immigration officials as an 'illegal alien'. The ruling demands their release by February 3.
A US judge has ordered the release of a five-year-old boy and his father from an immigration detention centre in Texas, condemning it as driven by a 'perfidious lust for unbridled power'. The detention of Liam Conejo Ramos, photographed wearing a blue bunny-shaped hat and a Spider-Man backpack, sparked national outcry after he was taken into custody on the driveway of his home in Minneapolis. The child's father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, was also detained.Following the outrage over the pre-schooler's detention, immigration officials said they did not 'target a child' but were conducting an operation against his father, an 'illegal alien' who 'abandoned' his son when approached. On Saturday, US District Judge Fred Biery granted an emergency request from the family's lawyer, ordering government officials to release the father and son by 3 February. The judge included a photo of Ramos in his fluffy blue hat in his ruling.'...the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatising children,' Biery wrote in his ruling. He expressed that deportations through the US immigration system should occur in a more orderly and humane manner.'Observing human behaviour confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,' he said of the detention of Ramos. The BBC has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment. Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing the family, confirmed that they were being held at a detention centre in San Antonio, Texas, after arriving in the US from Ecuador in 2024 to seek asylum while following the proper immigration protocols. Recently, US President Donald Trump has ramped up immigration enforcement efforts in Minneapolis in an initiative dubbed 'Operation Metro Surge'.
