5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, asylum seekers who were arrested last week in Minnesota, had been ordered to be launched by a federal choose in Texas on Saturday.
U.S. District Choose Fred Biery ordered the boy and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, launched from the immigration detention heart at Dilley “as quickly as practicable” however no later than Feb. 3.
“Any attainable or anticipated removing or switch of Petitioners underneath this current detention is prohibited,” the choose wrote in his order.
A screenshot of U.S. District Choose Fred Biery Jan. 31 order.
U.S. District Court docket for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division
The boy was apprehended by immigration officers shortly after arriving house from preschool whereas his father was of their driveway, faculty officers stated final week.
Each had been taken to a federal detention facility in Texas.
They’d a pending asylum case however no order of deportation directing that they be faraway from the US, ABC Information beforehand reported.
The Division of Homeland Safety alleged the daddy abandoned his son when federal brokers approached to arrest him. Nonetheless, that account differs from what the household’s legal professional and faculties officers stated occurred.
“One other grownup dwelling within the house was exterior and begged the brokers to allow them to deal with the small little one, however was refused,” officers from Conejo Ramos’ faculty stated.
Marcos Charles, the highest ICE official in Minneapolis, alleged that folks dwelling within the house refused to take the boy when brokers approached the door.
“We are going to implement the regulation because it’s written, however we are going to go above and past to reunite households, as a result of that’s who we’re,” Charles stated.
Biery had temporarily blocked the removing of the boy and his father from the district in Texas pending the habeas case difficult their detention.
Individuals protest in opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they march towards the South Texas Household Residential Middle, January 28, 2026 in Dilley, Texas.
Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Photographs
Within the order releasing Liam and his father, Biery stated the case “has its genesis within the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented authorities pursuit of each day deportation quotas, apparently even when it requires traumatizing kids.”
“Observing human habits confirms that for some amongst us, the perfidious lust for unbridled energy and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” the choose wrote. “And the rule of regulation be damned.”
Choose Biery stated that the daddy and son in the end might “return to their house nation, involuntarily or by self-deportation,” however added that it must be a consequence “by a extra orderly and humane coverage than presently in place.”
The choose concluded his opinion with a photograph of the five-year-old when he was detained.
The superintendent of the college district attended by Liam has spoken with the household, in line with an announcement from the district.
“Columbia Heights Public Faculties is so blissful to listen to the announcement that Liam and his father can be launched and returned house,” the district stated. “We wish all kids to be launched from detention facilities and the reunification of households who’ve been unjustly separated.”
-ABC Information’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
