On February 4, the Trump administration quietly filed a motion to end the asylum claims of one of the countless Minnesota residents being targeted by masked immigration agents throughout the state.
In this case, their mark is just five years old, one of thousands of children likely to have been abducted by adults with guns since President Donald Trump’s second term began.
Liam Conejo Ramos’s nightmare began on January 20, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents grabbed him from the driveway of his home in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. He and his father Adrian Conejo Arias were then flown more than 1,300 miles away to the notorious South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, where Liam developed a fever and cough, his father said. Thanks to a judge’s order for his release, the preschooler is back in Minnesota, but the Department of Homeland Security’s February 4 motion means he may not be able to stay for long. In addition to seeking to end Liam’s asylum, DHS has requested that the family’s deportation proceedings be expedited, a lawyer for the family said.
People of conscience in Minneapolis and across the country have followed Liam’s ordeal with horror and shock, especially after a photo of Liam in a fluffy blue hat with a federal agent gripping his backpack went viral. But the Trump administration’s willingness to target and terrorize children and their caregivers extends far beyond Liam’s case.
In fact, Liam wasn’t even the first student in his school district to be taken that day; the same morning, masked agents grabbed a seventeen-year-old high schooler on the way to school in Columbia Heights. Federal agents have abducted at least seven students from the district since the start of the year, including a ten-year-old and her mother. Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent Zena Stenvik told reporters that ICE’s kidnapping tactics have included pursuing school buses and intruding…
Auteur: Lily Seltz
