Top Homeland Security officials hit back Friday at viral claims that a 5-year-old boy was used as “bait” to arrest his father and then detained by ICE in Minnesota earlier this week.
ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) head Marcos Charles said that the little boy, identified as Liam Conejo Ramos, was abandoned in a car by his illegal migrant father as federal officers attempted to arrest his illegal immigrant dad Tuesday as part ofa targeted operation.
Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias fled ICE on foot, leaving his son behind, the ICE official said.
“One of the officers stayed behind with the child while other officers apprehended his father,” Charles said.
Charles added that later, when officers reached the boy’s home, no one opened the door to take him in.
“The people refused to take him in and open the door,” he said, noting the father eventually requested he and his child be in detention together.
The pair is now in an ICE facility in Texas. DHS officials said Arias, an Ecuadorian national, was in the country illegally after he was released by the Biden administration.
DHS’s strong rebuttal on Friday came after Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stevik claimed this week that ICE was “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait” when officers approached the house.
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The local school chief also said the father told the child’s mother not to open the door.
“Why detain a 5-year-old?” she asked. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
Anti-ICE activists and Democrats have used a viral image of the child as the latest rallying cry against President Trump’s illegal immigrant crackdown, especially in Minnesota.
“In Minneapolis, ICE arrested a 5-year-old coming home from preschool and tried to use him as human bait,” the Democratic National Committee posted on social media Thursday as they ratcheted up the rhetoric against ICE.
“His teacher describes him as “a bright young student. These Monsters are sick.”
With Post wires
