ICE detains 5-year-old boy in Minnesota

More than half a dozen federal agents were seen on cell phone video Tuesday surrounding this five-year-old boy, wearing a bunny hat and a Spiderman backpack. Liam Ramos was taken into custody along with his dad, Ecuadorian asylum seeker Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias. The school district staff are right here. He's going with his dad.

The preschooler was the fourth student from the Columbia Heights Public School District to be detained by immigration officials in the past week. Over the last few weeks, ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots multiple times, and taking our kids.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said ICE did not target a child, adding he was, quote, "abandoned by the father," who fled on foot after officers tried to arrest him, and further added that Conejo Arias wanted the child to remain with him once he was detained. DHS also said they attempted to reunite the child with his mother, but she refused to take custody. But according to school board Chair Mary Granlund, that's not how it happened. She says she saw it herself. Somebody else saw me and said to the agents, "school is here. The school is here. They can take him." And I said, "yes, I'm here. I am here. I can help with that." You offered to take him, and you saw ICE agents drive away with the five-year-old boy? Yes. What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?

Yesterday, Vice President JD Vance visited Minnesota, imploring state leaders to de-escalate. What is the federal government's role in turning down the temperature? What I do think that we can do is working with state and local officials. We can make the worst moments of chaos much less common. And all they've got to do is meet us halfway. And according to the family's lawyer, Liam and his father entered the country in 2024 at the Brownsville border crossing. That's in South Texas. They submitted an asylum claim through what's called the CBP One app, and they were going through the regular steps as part of larger immigration processing. Now, here in the Twin Cities today, several businesses have another day of protests planned. But Errol, with temperatures dropping, it is cold out here. Yeah, we'll keep our eyes fixed closely to what happens in Minneapolis this weekend. Nicole, thank you for your reporting.