US must release 5-year-old ‘bunny hat boy’ detained by ICE, judge orders
Liam Conejo Ramos was allegedly used as bait to lure out his family, further strengthening the backlash against Trump’s migrant crackdown
A five-year-old boy and his father must be released by Tuesday from the Texas centre where they have been held after being detained by immigration officers in Minnesota, a federal judge ordered Saturday in a ruling that harshly criticised US President Donald Trump’s administration’s approach to enforcement.
Images of Liam Conejo Ramos, with a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack being surrounded by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights on January 20, sparked even more outcry about the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
It also led to a protest at the Texas family detention centre and a visit by two Texas Democratic members of Congress.
US District Judge Fred Biery, who sits in San Antonio and was appointed by former Democratic president Bill Clinton, said in his ruling that “the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatising children”.
Biery had previously ruled that the boy and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, could not be removed from the US, at least for now.
In his order on Saturday, Biery said “apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence”, suggesting the Trump administration’s actions echo those that then author and future president Thomas Jefferson enumerated as grievances against England’s King George.