Detention of 5-year-old by federal agents incenses Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS – A five-year-old boy wearing a Spider-Man backpack and an oversized hat was detained with his father by the immigration authorities on Jan 20, one of four students who have been apprehended in one school district in the Minneapolis suburbs over the past two weeks, school officials said.

The pre-kindergarten pupil, Liam Conejo Ramos, is pictured in a photo released by the school system as he stands next to a vehicle with an adult’s hand on his backpack. His father is not in sight.

The image prompted outrage in the Twin Cities area, where many people have been

angered since mid-December by the Trump administration’s

surge in deportation operations.

“Why detain a five-year-old?” Ms Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of schools in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, asked at a Jan 21 news conference about the episode.

Exactly what happened on a snow-covered block in Columbia Heights during the arrest is in dispute. The small school district and the federal government have given conflicting accounts.

The boy and his father were taken to Dilley, Texas, outside of San Antonio, where they are being held at an immigration detention centre, according to Mr Marc Prokosch, a lawyer working with the family. The boy’s immigration status was not clear.

The image of the child in custody prompted an outcry. Some residents asked sarcastically whether Liam was an example of the criminals the government has said it was trying to detain. The government sought to shift blame to the father, who they said was in the country illegally.

School district officials said the boy and his father, Mr Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, had just arrived home when immigration officials detained them.

Ms Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that when the agents sought to detain the father, he fled on foot and left Liam behind in the vehicle.

Ms McLaughlin said that Mr Conejo Arias was Ecuadorian. She did not suggest he had any criminal record, and he does not appear in any Minnesota criminal court records.

When parents of younger children are arrested by the immigration authorities, Ms McLaughlin said, their parents are asked whether they want their children to be brought with them or be placed with another relative or friend. Often, the children are US citizens.

School officials said that they had reviewed paperwork showing that Mr Conejo Arias’ family has an active asylum case and no order of deportation. School officials accused immigration agents of making the child knock on the door of his home as “bait” to apprehend others, something that immigration officials denied.

Experts said agents needed probable cause to believe that Liam had been in the country unlawfully in order for a detention to be legal.

“You definitely cannot arrest a child to use them as bait,” said Professor Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mr Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official running the Minneapolis crackdown, told reporters on Jan 22 that federal agents’ law enforcement missions are “legal, ethical and moral”, and added, “I didn’t detain a five-year-old.”

But school officials said that Liam was the fourth child in the district to be detained by immigration agents in the past two weeks. Two of them are high-schoolers; one is a 10-year-old girl who was apprehended on her way to school with her mother.

About 22,000 people live in Columbia Heights, a diverse city just north of Minneapolis with many immigrant residents. Federal agents have been present there constantly in recent weeks. The city’s public school district serves about 3,400 students in five schools.

Agents with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, have been

circling schools and following buses

, Ms Stenvik said.

On Jan 21, an ICE vehicle drove onto school system property, but a member of the high school staff told the people inside to leave. NYTIMES