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ICE Detention of 5-Year-Old in Minnesota Prompts Mass Protests as Vance Defends Operations

Minnesota has asked a federal judge to halt the enforcement campaign after conflicting accounts of how the child was taken.

Overview

  • Vice-President J.D. Vance confirmed the five-year-old’s detention, visited Minneapolis to urge calm, and said agents acted after the father fled, while school officials allege the boy was used to knock on the door.
  • ICE and DHS insist the child was not targeted; an ICE official said agents kept the boy safe and later reunited him with his father in a family residential facility.
  • The family’s lawyer says the father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, and son, Liam Conejo Ramos, are held together at the Dilley, Texas center and that the family entered legally and sought asylum in 2024.
  • Thousands marched across Minneapolis on Friday with business closures and clergy arrests reported, and the UN human rights chief condemned what he called routine mistreatment that tears families apart.
  • State officials moved in federal court to pause ICE’s Minnesota operations with a hearing set for Monday, and lawyers reported a separate case in which a two-year-old was briefly detained this week before being returned to her mother.