Liam Ramos, a five-year-old preschooler, has become a symbol of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. Photographs show the boy standing next to a black vehicle with an adult figure's hand on his backpack, and at a house door with a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent behind him. The Department of Homeland Security claims Liam was held for protection after his father fled during an attempted arrest.
However, officials from the Columbia Heights public school district, which released the images, suggest the boy may have been used as bait to lure adults out of the home for arrest. The photos have drawn comparisons to iconic images of children in crises, such as Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler found dead on a Turkish beach in 2015, and Elián González, a Cuban boy involved in a custody dispute in 2000.
Liam was taken to a detention center in San Antonio, Texas, along with his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador. The family's lawyer, Marc Prokosch, stated they entered the US legally at a designated crossing point, were not subject to a deportation order, and were following proper asylum procedures.
Zena Stenvik, superintendent of Columbia Heights public schools, noted that Liam is the fourth child in the area detained by ICE in three weeks. Others include a 10-year-old girl taken on her way to school and a 17-year-old student seized by armed, masked agents without parental presence. The incidents follow the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent on January 7.
