Judge Orders Release of 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE in Minneapolis

The Washington Post

12:23 JST, February 1, 2026

A federal judge has ordered 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, to be released from federal immigration custody after the pair were detained in their driveway in Minnesota last week, sparking outrage nationwide and protests at the family detention center in Dilley, Texas, where they have been held.

In a sharply worded statement, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said the administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to its own agents “do not pass probable cause muster.”

“That is called the fox guarding the henhouse,” he wrote. “The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”

Below his signature, the judge also included the now well-known photo of Ramos as he was taken into custody wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a bright blue hat. The photo and Liam’s detainment sparked outrage across the country and further inflamed tensions between Minnesota residents and the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts there.

Jennifer Scarborough, one of the attorneys representing Liam and his father, said in a statement that they were “grateful” for the decision.

“We are now working closely with our clients and their family to ensure a safe and timely reunion,” Scarborough and the other attorneys wrote in a joint statement. “We are pleased that the family will now be able to focus on being together and finding some peace after this traumatic ordeal.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. The judge ordered that Liam and his father be released from custody “as soon as practicable,” and no later than Tuesday.

“Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation,” Biery wrote. “But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.”

The detention of children has prompted a widening backlash in recent weeks – protests in Minnesota and Texas, criticism from elected officials and now, unusually, a sharply personal response from the bench.

In ordering the release of Liam and his father, Biery went beyond conventional judicial language, including by citing two Bible verses. One, Matthew 19:14, urges that children not be hindered from approaching “the kingdom of heaven”; the other, John 11:35, consists of just two words: “Jesus wept.”

Liam was returning from preschool when he and his father were approached by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to the boy’s school district, Columbia Heights Public Schools. The Department of Homeland Security said Conejo Arias fled on foot and was pursued by several ICE officers, while another officer remained with Liam for his safety.

An adult who was living in the home but outside at the time of the incident “begged the agents” to leave Liam with them, but ICE agents refused, the school district said.

DHS said it was not targeting Liam and that ICE’s policy is to ask parents if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person designated by a parent. Authorities said they took Liam into custody because relatives abandoned or refused to take him.

The family’s lawyer, Marc Prokosch, said in a previous statement that Liam and his father are not U.S. citizens but “have been following the legal process perfectly, from presenting themselves at the border to applying for asylum and waiting for the process to go through.”

The detention of children at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley has drawn mounting backlash in recent weeks. Outside the heavily secured compound on Wednesday, hundreds of faith leaders, labor organizers and advocates marched toward the detention center, calling for the release of families held inside.

In a statement Saturday afternoon, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) thanked people across the country and world for “speaking out in support of Liam and so many other children in detention.” He added that he had also reached out to Liam’s mom and lawyers to tell them he would continue “to do everything I can to make sure he is safe.”

Earlier this week, Castro said on social media that he had visited Conejo Arias and Liam at the detention center. Conejo Arias said his son “hasn’t been himself,” and had been sleeping a lot because “he’s been depressed.”

Castro said he told Liam’s father that his classmates at Valley View Elementary School “miss him” and that “they’re waiting for him to get back.”

Biery, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, cited lines from the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth Amendment in his justification of Liam’s and his father’s release. He said the case “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” he wrote. “And the rule of law be damned.”