A five-year-old boy and his father returned to Minneapolis on Sunday after being released from a Texas immigration detention center where they had been held for more than a week, according to US Representative Joaquin Castro.
“Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack,” Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio, wrote in a post on X. “Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam. We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”
Castro said he personally picked up the child, Liam Conejo Ramos, and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley and accompanied them back to Minnesota early Sunday.
The pair were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on 20 January. Images of the preschooler wearing a bunny hat and plaid coat while being detained outside his home in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, spread widely online and prompted national outrage.
On Saturday, a federal judge ordered their release, sharply criticizing the government’s actions. “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas,” the judge wrote, “apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
According to the Columbia Heights public school district, the child was returning home from school with his father when immigration agents stopped their vehicle near their residence and detained both of them.
“This family is following US legal parameters and has an active asylum case with no order of deportation,” school district superintendent Zena Stenvik said in a statement issued 21 January. “Why detain a five-year-old? You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
Stenvik said another adult at the home offered to take custody of the child during the arrest but was refused by officers.
The Department of Homeland Security disputed that account, saying in a post on X that the child “was abandoned by his father” and that the alleged mother “refused to take custody of her own child.”
Following the release, the Columbia Heights public school district thanked supporters and called for the release of other detained students.
“Liam’s release is an important development,” a district spokesperson said. “We hope it will lead to positive developments for other families as well, including our other four students who are being held at the Dilley facility in Texas.”
The South Texas Family Residential Center, operated by private prison company CoreCivic, primarily holds families detained together. While designed to be less restrictive than traditional detention facilities, lawmakers who visited the center last week described troubling conditions.
Castro and Representative Jasmine Crockett said they encountered children showing signs of severe psychological distress. Crockett said detained children told her they were not attending school, contradicting claims by facility staff.
Conejo Arias told lawmakers that his son was frequently tired and eating poorly while in detention. The facility houses approximately 1,100 people, according to Castro.
An attorney for the family previously told CNN that Conejo Arias and his son entered the United States legally from Ecuador and have a pending asylum case. The lawyer said they fled due to economic hardship, insecurity and unstable employment conditions, and remain in active legal proceedings to obtain lawful status.
According to data analyzed by the Deportation Data Project, ICE booked roughly 3,800 minors into family immigration detention between January and October 2025. The total number of children currently held in such facilities is unknown.
