ICE Used a Five-Year-Old as Bait Before Sending Him to Texas

Federal immigration agents reportedly used a 5-year-old boy in Minnesota to lure his family members out of their home in order to detain and deport them. Then they sent him away.

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was returning home from school Tuesday with his father when masked immigration agents approached them in their driveway.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed Thursday that officers were only targeting Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, Liam’s father, who “fled on foot—abandoning his child.”

However: “Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child, and was refused,” said Zena Stenvik, a Columbia Heights Public School superintendent who recounted the story to MPR News.

“Instead the agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

Stenvik said that the Ramos family had an “active asylum case” and no deportation order. “I have viewed the legal paperwork with my own eyes,” she said.

“Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Stenvik said.

Family members said they didn’t know where the child was for nearly 24 hours.

Marc Prokosch, the family’s lawyer, said that based on his experience, he believed Liam and his father were sent out of state. “I’m exploring whether we file a habeas corpus petition to get him out; we’d have to actually file that down in Texas now,” he told MPR News.

Prokosch confirmed that the family had been following the legal asylum process. “Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do, and so this is just … cruelty,” he said.

According to Columbia Heights school district officials, three other students have been detained by federal agents in recent weeks, including a 10-year-old who was detained with her mother on her way to school, another student who was taken on the way to school, and a 17-year-old who was detained when ICE agents stormed into their home.

In December, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wouldn’t deny that the Trump administration was illegally deporting people with ongoing asylum cases. ICE attorneys at immigration hearings are increasingly asking immigration judges to dismiss asylum cases, and the Trump administration has instructed judges to grant quick dismissals. At the same time, the Trump administration has purged dozens of immigration judges and sought to recruit so-called “deportation judges” to help ramp up the government’s soft ethnic cleansing.

This story has been updated.

The Department of Homeland Security is crudely referring to its newest immigration crackdown in Maine as “Operation Catch of the Day,” as it prepares to hunt and catch immigrants like lobsters.

“These masked men with no regard for the rule of law are causing long-term damage to our state and to our country,” Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline said on Wednesday. “Lewiston stands for the dignity of all people who call Maine home.”

Maine’s two biggest cities, Portland and Lewiston, have large Somali populations, and were already on edge as the Trump administration continued its racist targeting of the group. The operation’s very name speaks to the inhumanity with which these agents treat people.

DHS announced the operation began with a series of arrests on Tuesday. It’s not clear how long ICE agents will be stationed in Maine, or if Border Patrol agents currently in Minneapolis will head to Maine next.

“ICE has been operating in Maine for a while. But now they’re threatening to step up their brutality, and bring what we saw in Minneapolis to our state,” Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner said on X last week, before offering strategies for community members to combat aggressive immigration agents. “We will not let masked agents come to Maine and terrorize our communities. We will not be intimidated. This is our home.”

Border Patrol is not welcome in Minneapolis’s streets, its schools, or its gas stations.

A crowd of anti-ICE protesters stormed federal agents at a Speedway gas station on Nicollet Avenue Wednesday, throwing out Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino alongside his masked subordinates.

Videos captured by independent local journalist Amanda Moore showed dozens of Minneapolitans photographing and chanting at the agents, yelling at them to “get out.”

“Get in your fucking car and go,” one woman can be heard screaming in Moore’s footage. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“This isn’t Christian, this isn’t American. This is fascism,” another man shouts.

In another clip captured by Moore, Bovino appeared to be icily booted from the Speedway’s convenience store, with a man following steps behind him.

“ICE does not belong on this property at all, we do not support ICE,” the man said. “Get off our property. Bye, bye, bye.”

Bovino then walked into a huddle of people—several of which appeared to be Border Patrol agents—behind a gas pump and a large, tan SUV. The crowd seemingly trapped a sedan at the private establishment, forcing the driver to step out of his vehicle to demand they “get the fuck out of my way.”

After the driver repeated himself several times, an agent took it upon himself to shuffle his confederates away from the gas station’s thruway.

“Get out of my city,” the driver said as he drove off.

Mass protests have kicked off in Minnesota since ICE agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen, on January 7. Since then, federal officers have ripped people from their homes and families, pulled over school buses, attacked teachers and students at a Minneapolis high school, and even clashed with local law enforcement.

In an attempt to defend their own city from the state-sponsored violence, some residents have opted to openly carry their firearms through the city, brandishing their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Locals have formed neighborhood watches to follow ICE vehicles, banging pots and pans and screaming to alert others when agents enter their residential neighborhoods. The movement has extended beyond picketed marches and morphed into something far more direct—apparently capable of hunting down Bovino and his underlings before forcing them out of the area.

Local politicians—including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—have advised ICE and Border Patrol to exit their cities and state, arguing that the federal agents have done more harm than good. In 2025, before Good’s death, the agency killed 32 people—it’s deadliest year in more than two decades.

But rather than heed the warning, the Trump administration has opted to up the ante, issuing grand jury subpoenas to Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, while placing 1,500 active-duty troops on standby for a potential invasion of Minnesota. The Minnesota National Guard has already advised its members to wear hi-vis reflective vests—rather than military camouflage—in order to keep them safe from the fury of local residents who could mistake them for federal agents.

Donald Trump is now claiming that the “framework of a future deal” has been reached on Greenland and “the entire Arctic region.”

The president posted on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon that he had a very productive meeting with the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As a result, he wrote, a possible “solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations. Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st.”

Last week, Trump had threatened to impose tariffs against European countries that opposed his plan to annex Greenland. He may have been persuaded otherwise after European pension funds began divesting from U.S. Treasuries and the European Parliament suspended a possible trade deal with the U.S. Wednesday over his threats.

Despite Trump’s post Wednesday, his dream of annexing Greenland still seems unlikely, given that Rutte and NATO do not control the territory, Denmark does. Both the elected leadership of Denmark and Greenland have said any discussions about Greenland’s future is up to them, not the United States, and that the island is not for sale.

Trump also wrote that “Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and various others, as needed, will be responsible for the negotiations—They will report directly to me.” It’s a rather large question mark as to what will actually be the subject of the negotiations.

Vance is not well thought of by European leaders, and has insulted them on several occasions. A meeting between Vance, Rubio, and the foreign ministers of Greenland and Denmark in the White House last week was over very quickly, giving the impression that it didn’t go well, especially considering NATO countries deployed troops to Greenland the next day. That does not bode well for these new negotiations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wants to pretend that Donald Trump didn’t mix up Greenland and Iceland—but he did. Multiple times.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos Wednesday, Trump repeatedly and erroneously mixed up Greenland with Iceland, a completely separate landmass and independent nation. The gaffe sparked concern that Trump, who has been showing increasing signs of cognitive decline, had no idea what country he was even demanding to own.

Once again demonstrating her fierce commitment to truth-telling, Leavitt tried to defend the president by lying about something that everyone heard.

“President Trump appeared to mix up Greenland and Iceland around three times,” NewsNation’s Libbey Dean wrote on X after the speech.

“No he didn’t, Libby,” Leavitt responded. “His written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.”

She included an image of Greenland, which appeared to be a large mass of ice. Regardless of what was written in Trump’s prepared remarks, the president claimed the territory was “Iceland” multiple times—another place entirely.

Watch what Trump said for yourself: