Five-year-old boy Liam Conejo Ramos was detained by ICE after pre-school (Picture: Columbia Heights Public Schools)
A small child in a bright blue bunny hat, Spider-Man backpack strapped to his shoulders, braces against the cold, a terrified look on his face. This is Liam Conejo Ramos.
Directly behind him, stands a full-grown man, dressed head-to-foot in black, military-style clothing, his face covered with a balaclava, gripping the boy’s backpack to prevent escape.
Liam is now one of more than roughly 68,000 people detained by ICE agents marauding through American neighbourhoods in search of those deemed a danger to the US.
The difference this time? He’s just five years old.
The scene only grows more distressing as the anonymous ICE agent escorts the child towards a waiting vehicle.
In the background, desperate pleas for his release go unheard.
This isn’t a dispatch from a distant authoritarian regime.
This is the United States, the self-proclaimed leader of the free world, conducting a high-stakes enforcement action against a child as he gets home from preschool.
Liam Conejo Ramos, a ‘loving and kind’ little boy, smiles at the camera in a school photo
(Picture: Columbia Heights Public Schools)
A masked ICE agent leads young Liam towards a waiting vehicle as horrified bystanders watch on (Picture: Columbia Heights Public Schools)
The harrowing scene played out in Columbia Heights, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
This is the city where mother-of-three Renee Good was shot dead by an ICE officer on January 7.
Video footage showing 37-year-old’s final moments as the officer fired through her side window had the city on edge well before this latest development.
An emotional Zena Stenvik, the local schools superintendent, was already reeling from the capture of three other students in the last month, when she gave a press conference on Wednesday.
She described the bleak episode that led to the ‘kind and loving’ boy’s detention.
Stenvik said Ramos had just arrived home from preschool when he and his father were apprehended in their driveway.Â
Another adult living in the home ‘begged’ agents to let him care for Liam, she said.
Instead, the agent reportedly led the boy to his front door and told him to knock on the door.
The idea was to ‘see if anyone else was home – essentially using a five-year-old as bait’, the superintendent said in a statement.
The boy’s middle school-aged brother is said to have returned home to find his father and younger brother missing. The boys’ mother was not detained by ICE.Â
Having seen images of children kept in cages in 2018, Stenvik called for ‘justice’ for little Liam.
Clashes between ICE and furious citizens have gripped Minneapolis
The suburb where Liam was from was just a 25 minute drive from the scene of Renee Good’s shooting.
That indicates just how intense the situation has become in the snow-crested streets of Minneapolis.
Patrols of anti-ICE protestors have been snaking through the streets in SUVs – on the lookout for federal immigration agents.
When they spot an agent, they will follow them, using whistles and car horns to alert potential detainees to their presence.
A crowds of anti-ICE protestors stand in front of the entrance of the ICE detention facility at the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis (Picture: ZumaPress/Mega)
A person who offered medical aid to a detainee was held by federal agents as immigration enforcement continued in Minneapolis yesterday (Picture: Leah Millis/Reuters)
‘If we really have patrollers on every corner, it’s going to be really hard for ICE to do what they’re trying to do,’ one demonstrator told the Guardian.
Store owners, meanwhile, have become mini aid centers for families too terrified to leave their homes for fear of falling into immigration authorities’ hands.
A Minneapolis coffee shop and a long‑established sex toy store were among them, distributing food and medicine to families.
JP, who owns the sex shop Smitten Kitten, said: ‘I am enraged… it’s diabolical. ICE have created what is akin to a natural disaster.’
One group of demonstrators even occupied a Target store, which they claimed agents had been using as a base of operations.
But many local businesses have closed altogether – including roughly 80% of immigrant-run outlets.
Protests and vandalism have meanwhile swept through the city, resulting in clashes with law enforcement.
Federal agents detain a person after firing tear gas to deter protestors (Picture: Leah Millis/Reuters)
Trump has threatened to deploy 1,500 soldiers to Minneapolis by invoking the Insurrection Act.
Around 3,000 federal officers have already been deployed to Minnesota in recent weeks.
But in rural areas, anti-ICE groups are reportedly struggling to respond to the government crackdown.
One woman, who wished to remain anonymous, lives in a rural Minnesota town roughly two hours outside Minneapolis.
Tensions are so high that she declined to share her name for fear of backlash from locals supportive of Trump’s ramped-up immigration enforcement tactics.
As immigration enforcement officers tightened their grip on the streets of the state capital, she began to fear that the ICE ‘wrecking ball’ would come to her sleepy town.
And now they’re here, she says.
‘About two weeks ago, we became inundated with ten to 15 brand new trucks and SUVs,’ she told Metro.
She claimed locals had identified them as government-affiliated vehicles using a mobile app.
‘It feels like they’re doing preliminary surveillance.’
She said immigrant families were now scared to go outside, including those with legal immigration statuses, for fear of being detained.
‘If people are homebound and too afraid to leave they’re not getting supplies like medicines.’
She said volunteers were delivering vitally needed goods to some households.
In some instances, people are even walking other people’s children to school, she said.
That’s because parents are afraid they’ll be picked up by immigration enforcement on the street.
She admits the ‘scary’ atmosphere has left her ‘paranoid’ and she fears being spotted and followed by ICE officers.
‘There’s no line Trump won’t cross,’ she said. ‘We have to resist.’
In the small town of Willmar, ICE agents reportedly dined at a Mexican restaurant earlier in the day, then arrested workers at the same restaurant later that day, according to the Star Tribune.
Cities that are dwarfed in size by Minneapolis, but are still being targeted.
The chief deputy of St. James – a sleepy town of just 5,000 people – has said Homeland Security Officials have launched their local mission.
About half of its residents are said to be of Hispanic origin. Residents have told local media that tensions are ‘really high’.
The number of people locked up by ICE across the US climbed to record numbers, according to data published by the department last week.
The data showed that, as of January 15, ICE was holding roughly 73,000 individuals, with many now facing deportation.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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