{"id":453920,"date":"2026-02-07T05:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/453920\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T05:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T05:49:12","slug":"nothing-retaliatory-us-seeks-deportation-of-5-year-old-liam-conejo-ramos-donald-trump-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/453920\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Nothing retaliatory\u2019: US seeks deportation of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos | Donald Trump News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__subhead\">Lawyers for the Ecuadorian asylum seeker have speculated the Trump administration is seeking \u2018retaliatory\u2019 actions.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article\u00a0|\u00a03 mins<\/p>\n<p>info<\/p>\n<p>Published On 6 Feb 20266 Feb 2026<\/p>\n<p>Click here to share on social media<\/p>\n<p>share2<\/p>\n<p class=\"rich-share__social-text\">Share<\/p>\n<p>The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has revealed it will continue to seek the deportation of five-year-old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/2\/1\/five-year-old-boy-and-father-detained-by-ice-return-home-to-minnesota\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Liam Conejo Ramos<\/a> and his father Adrian Conejo Arias, after their recent return to Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>The department, however, denied it is seeking their expedited removal, as the family\u2019s lawyer claimed.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are regular removal proceedings,\u201d DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on Friday. \u201cThis is standard procedure, and there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation\u2019s immigration laws.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Conejo Ramos\u2019s case has drawn nationwide attention since his initial detention on January 20.<\/p>\n<p>Photos went viral of Conejo Ramos standing in the snow, dressed in floppy blue bunny ears, with an immigration agent grabbing onto his Spiderman backpack.<\/p>\n<p>Officials in Minnesota\u2019s Columbia Heights Public School District accused immigration officials of using the preschool student as \u201cbait\u201d for his father. DHS, meanwhile, has claimed that his father abandoned the child when approached by immigration authorities.<\/p>\n<p>Each side has denied the other\u2019s account of the January 20 arrest.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-arc-image-770 wp-image-4293663\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/AP26022729648178-1770416380.jpg\" alt=\"Liam Conejo Ramos in blue bunny ears, being escorted by federal agents\" fetchpriority=\"low\"\/>Liam Conejo Ramos, 5, is detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after arriving home from preschool on January 20, 2026 [Ali Daniels via AP Photo]<\/p>\n<p>Since December, the administration of President Donald Trump has led an immigration crackdown in Minnesota known as Operation Metro Surge. As many as 3,000 agents were deployed to the state at the operation\u2019s height.<\/p>\n<p>But bystander videos and photos have raised questions about the heavy-handed tactics being used, particularly in the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area.<\/p>\n<p>There, two US citizens were shot dead by immigration agents in the last month alone: Renee Nicole Good on January 7 and Alex Pretti on January 24.<\/p>\n<p>The outcry over the shooting deaths, as well as other reports of violence against bystanders and warrantless arrests, has prompted the Trump administration to announce this week the withdrawal of nearly 700 immigration agents.<\/p>\n<p>The detention of Conejo Ramos and his father had been among the high-profile flashpoints during the crackdown.<\/p>\n<p>The five-year-old and his father were detained as they were coming home from preschool. They were quickly transported from Minnesota to Dilley, Texas, where they were kept in an immigration processing centre while Trump officials sought their expulsion.<\/p>\n<p>But on January 27, Judge Fred Biery ruled that the two <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/2\/1\/us-judge-orders-release-of-five-year-old-and-father-from-ice-detention\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">should be released<\/a> while they challenged their expulsion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law,\u201d Biery wrote in his brief but cutting decision.<\/p>\n<p>Conejo Ramos and his father arrived in the US from Ecuador. Their legal team has said the pair entered the country legally and were in the midst of their asylum proceedings at the time of their detention.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyer Danielle Molliver told Minnesota Public Radio this week that DHS had filed documents to expedite the father and son\u2019s removal, speculating that the action was \u201cretaliatory\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s really frustrating as an attorney, because they keep throwing new obstacles in our way,\u201d she told the public broadcaster. \u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no reason that this should be expedited.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lawyers for the Ecuadorian asylum seeker have speculated the Trump administration is seeking \u2018retaliatory\u2019 actions. Listen to this&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,12,2420,3075,10907,3,111,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":["post-453920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-donald-trump","tag-government","tag-human-rights","tag-migration","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-canada","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}