Democratic lawmakers are lashing out at Immigration and Customs Enforcement after agents detained a five-year-old Minnesota boy with his father and transported them to Texas, with one congressman calling for the agency to be disbanded.
Liam Ramos was taken into custody on Tuesday as he and his father arrived home from school in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb. According to school officials, an ICE agent used the child to knock on the family’s front door to determine if anyone else was inside, before detaining father and son.
Joaquin Castro, a representative from Texas, said his office has been working to locate the boy and demand his release, but that ICE has not provided information despite acknowledging the inquiry. Castro said his office suspects Liam may have been sent to the Dilley detention center, a family detention facility about 90 minutes from San Antonio.
“Ice and the other federal agencies under Donald Trump have gotten super secretive,” Castro said in a video statement. “This is the least transparent that an administration has been in generations.”
Castro said he was scheduled to visit the facility next week, and said he believes ICE “should be disbanded” and get “zero funding”.
“They’ve become reckless, they’ve become lawless,” he said, “and it’s not about immigration enforcement any more. It’s about abusing people.”
Ruben Gallego, a senator from Arizona, questioned whether the operation made Americans safer to begin with. “These are the ‘violent criminals’ Trump is going after. Liam Ramos is 5 years old. He was used as bait to knock on doors to see if anyone else was inside. Then they took him and shipped him to Texas. This is fucked up and it doesn’t make anyone safer,” he wrote on X.
Yassamin Ansari, a representative from Arizona, on Thursday said it was “absolutely disgusting that they used a 5-year-old child as bait so that they could arrest his father”. She added: “Murdering US citizens and kidnapping children in front of our eyes is pure evil.”
Jimmy Gomez, a representative from California, echoed similar sentiments. “ICE just used a 5-year-old boy as bait, forcing him to knock on his own door so they could arrest his father,” he wrote. “Trump, ICE and CBP don’t see these families as people, and that’s exactly how they’re treating them.”
Marc Prokosch, an attorney representing the family, said the Ramos family had followed proper legal procedures. They have an active asylum case and entered the United States at an official port of entry, he said.
“The family did everything they were supposed to in accordance with how the rules have been set out,” he said. “They did not come here illegally. They are not criminals.
Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a representative from California, said: “This isn’t about criminals. It’s about cruelty.”
The homeland security department defended the raid, with assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin saying ICE was conducting a targeted operation to arrest the father and did not target the child. She alleged the father fled on foot, abandoning his child, and that an officer remained with Liam for his safety.
School superintendent Zena Stenvik disputed that account, saying the father’s car was still running when she arrived at the scene and that both had already been apprehended. She said another adult at the home had pleaded to take care of Liam but was denied.
“Why detain a five-year-old?” Stenvik said at a press conference. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
Liam is one of four children in the Columbia Heights school district who have been detained by federal immigration agents during an enforcement surge in the region over the past two weeks, according to district officials.
