Donald Trump’s administration is moving to deport the family of a five-year-old Minneapolis boy whose now-viral image capturing him in the snow as federal officers arrested his father has fueled outrage against the president’s mass deportation efforts.
The Department of Homeland Security filed a motion in immigration court this week to end asylum claims for the father of preschooler Liam Conejo Ramos to expedite their removal from the country, according to a family attorney.
The family’s asylum hearing, initially set for later this month, was abruptly moved to Friday morning.
The government’s motion, first reported by Minnesota Public Radio, was filed just days after a federal judge granted their release from an immigration detention center in Texas.
Liam’s father, Adrian Conejo Arias, who is originally from Ecuador, told the outlet that they do not know what will happen to them next. “The government is moving many pieces, it's doing everything possible to do us harm, so that they’ll probably deport us. We live with that fear, too,” he told MPR in Spanish.
“He hasn't been the same since this all happened,” Conejo Arias told Telemundo this week. “He calls me when he wakes up and says, ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ so I have to go to him.”
Liam has had nightmares and frequently wakes up crying since their return to Minneapolis, according to his father. While in custody, he repeatedly asked what they had done wrong, where they were and what happened to the blue knit hat he wore when he was detained, Conejo arias said.
There wasn’t much he could say “except hug him and tell him everything would be OK,” he told Telemundo.
The family entered the United States legally and applied for asylum upon arrival in 2024, according to a family attorney.
A member of the legal team says the government’s motion appears to be “retaliatory.”
“It’s really frustrating as an attorney, because they keep throwing new obstacles in our way,” immigration attorney Danielle Molliver with Nwokocha & Operana Law Offices told MPR. “There’s absolutely no reason that this should be expedited. It’s not very common.”
“This is retaliation,” said Minneapolis City Council member Jason Sanchez. “Our community, neighbors, and children deserve better.”
Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, who escorted the family from the detention center to Minnesota on Sunday, said the administration is “breaking legal precedent in an attempt to break this boy’s spirit and all of the Americans who are praying for him.”
Homeland Security has denied that the government is seeking to expedite their removal.
“These are regular removal proceedings. They are not in expedited removal,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Independent Friday. “This is standard procedure and there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.”
In an interview with ABC’s This Week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration was reviewing its options after a federal judge ordered the family’s release.
“The immigration law, the body of immigration law, is much different than our typical criminal process because of the administrative nature of what we do every day,” he said. “To the extent that we need to appeal that judge’s decision, I promise we will.”
Liam and his father were detained by federal officers from the driveway of their home in Minneapolis on January 20 and brought to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas, where the preschooler was sick and asking for his mother, according to family and lawmakers who visited him.
Their return to Minneapolis last weekend followed a blistering court order for their release, as District Judge Fred Biery delivered a brutal assessment of Trump’s “ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas” that appears to require “traumatizing children.”
Biery signed his three-page order with the viral image of Liam in his blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack and added two Bible verses below it: Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35.
The verse from Matthew states roughly that “Jesus said, ’Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,’” while the verse from John is “Jesus wept.”
Liam’s image has become emblematic of sweeping arrests in Minnesota after federal officers surged into the state last month, sparking several lawsuits and demonstrations across the country.
Federal courts in the state are swimming in cases alleging unlawful arrests and abusive and illegal use of force from immigrants and citizens alike swept up in the dragnet.
Liam is among at least seven Minneapolis-area children detained by federal agents in recent weeks in scenes that mirrored arrests during other immigration enforcement operations around the country, which have interrupted schools and put families, teachers and administrators on edge as they brace for officers showing up on campus and at home.
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