Featured Image Credit: Columbia Heights Public Schools
Topics: Politics, US News, Immigration, Texas
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Politics, US News, Immigration, Texas
A federal judge has blocked ICE from moving or deporting five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father.
On January 20, Liam was returning home from school accompanied by his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, when the pair were apprehended by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials and taken into custody.
Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, denied ICE 'target[ed] a child' and alleged parents are 'asked if they want to be removed with their children'.
The attorney representing Liam's family, Marc Prokosch, later spoke out arguing they 'are not criminals' and 'did not come here illegally'. He cited paperwork proving they entered via an official crossing point and 'did everything they were supposed to in accordance with how the rules have been set out'.
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Liam and his father are reportedly being held in Dilley ICE detention center in Texas.
And on January 26, US District Court Judge Fred Biery blocked federal immigration officers from moving him or his father to another location, as well as barring them from deporting the pair from the country completely.
Judge Biery ordered that 'until further order from this court' the father and son won't be able to be deported.
The court order also prevents ICE from relocating the pair out of the Western District of Texas.
It states: "It is further ordered that any possible or anticipated removal or transfer of Petitioners Adrian Conejo Arias and L.C.R., a minor child, is IMMEDIATELY STAYED until further order from this Court.
"Respondents shall not transfer Petitioners Adrian Conejo Arias and L.C.R., a minor child, outside of this judicial district during the pendency of this litigation and until further Order of this Court."
It follows reports which arose last week, exclusively shared by CBS News, that there is an active and pending case in immigration court connected to the father and son, so they would not be able to be legally deported yet anyway.
The detainment of the pair also led to two differing narratives from people close to the family versus ICE officers.
Officials accused Liam's father of 'abandoning his child' and the rest of the family as refusing to take him in.
However, a pastor named Sergio Amezcua who claims to have spoken to Liam's mother told CNN: "ICE agents were trying to use the baby for her to come out of her house. But the neighbors step[ped] up. Neighbors advised her not to do it."
Liam is one of four children from the school district in Minneapolis suburb Columbia Heights to have allegedly been detained by ICE.
As quoted by The Guardian, superintendent of Liam's school, Zena Stenvik, ICE agents of 'roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our kids' leaving children 'traumatized' and the whole community 'shaken'.