Minneapolis principal gets emotional over 5-year-old still detained by ICE, says his friends "notice that he's not here"
The principal at a Minnesota elementary school where Liam Conejo Ramos was returning from when he and his father were detained by federal agents last week became emotional as he was shown a photo of the 5-year-old inside a detention center in Texas.
"We got word that he was sick. That scares me," Jason Kuhlman, principal of Valley View Elementary School in Columbia Heights, told CBS News. "How is he being treated? What medical attention is he getting?"
Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro on Wednesday posted the photo of Liam and his father taken during the Democratic congressman's visit, saying in a video on social media: "The whole country's been worried about him. His dad said that he hasn't been himself. That he's been sleeping a lot because he's been depressed and sad."
Liam and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Ramos, were taken into custody as part of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation while in their driveway after just arriving home from his preschool classroom on Jan. 20. A federal judge has temporarily barred their deportation or transfer from the Dilley ICE detention center in Texas, a facility designed to house immigrant families with underage children who have been accused of violating federal immigration law.
Kuhlman said the judge's decision "was a win for us ... knowing that he's a step closer to coming back with us."
"[Liam] was a catalyst," Kuhlman said. "His friends notice that he's not here. Then when it hit the media, they start seeing his face on TV ... It's like, how do you explain that? When you start missing someone out of your classroom. How do you have that conversation with a 5-year-old?"
Images of Liam wearing a blue bunny hat and his school backpack garnered national attention following his detention.
Some of Liam's belongings, including another hat with ears, remain in his school cubby.
"His stuff's not going anywhere," Kuhlman said.
In an elementary school of about 574 students, administrators say some 24 families have had parents detained. Kuhlman said there have been other children in the school district who have been detained.
As federal immigration operations continue in the Twin Cities, the threat of deportation and wrongful detention of U.S. citizens has deeply impacted communities across the state. Kuhlman said his school's absence rate "skyrocketed" when federal immigration agents began what the Department of Homeland Security has said is the largest operation in its history.
"We're seeing [absence] levels comparable to COVID," Kuhlman said. "A quarter of our school is not with us ... We're talking at one point in time, almost 200 kids are gone."
The principal says the school, which he described as a full-service community school, had to quickly transform and started offering online lessons and delivering food to families who are too afraid to leave their homes.
"What we are seeing is a lot of families being brave and getting their kids to school," Kuhlman said. "Because they prioritize education. They want their kids here. For some of them, it's just too much of a risk."
For those staying at home, staff members are working second shifts to deliver food and other supplies, but Kuhlman worries it could endanger families.
"Just last Friday I delivered food and … they followed me around out of the trailer park that I was delivering to," Kuhlman said, referring to federal agents.
"And so we've had discussions with our chief of police to say, 'are we putting a target on our families?' But he goes, 'it's probably safer for you to go in and deliver food than for them to go out.'"
Kuhlman has a message for those who say ICE is doing its job: "Open your eyes. Believe your eyes. Believe what you see. He's (Liam's) not a criminal. It's not politics, it's about treating people like humans."