A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the possible deportation of the 5-year-old boy and his father, detained last week in Minnesota, by determining that they cannot be returned to Ecuador immediately.
Liam Conejo Ramos, 5, was separated from his family in the driveway of his home in a Minneapolis suburb after federal agents arrested his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, and both have since been held in a detention center in San Antonio, Texas.
Judge blocks deportation of 5-year-old boy
A federal judge has issued a temporary order prohibiting removal of a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father whose arrest last week in Minnesota quickly become another lightning rod for America’s divisions on immigration under the Trump administration. https://t.co/aTVts7RQEl pic.twitter.com/hSpjIGWoxH
– ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) January 27, 2026
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration in the U.S., said that the child’s father is an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador and that the agents took the child because the father himself said he wanted him to stay with him.
However, the family’s lawyer defends the illegality of the detention of both, since Conejo did not commit any crime and followed “all established protocols” to legally apply for asylum in the United States, including “appearing at all scheduled court hearings”.
The image of the boy, wearing his blue cap and school bag, detained by immigration agents has gone around the world as a symbol of the excesses of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policy in Minnesota.
The state of Minnesota has become ground zero for protests over the large deployment of immigration agents, some 3,000 since the operation began earlier this year, and a scene of terror for many citizens due to the continuous raids and detentions, as well as the deaths of citizens at the hands of these officers.
The death of Alex Pretti after being shot by federal agents, the second such death so far this month after that of Renée Good, has also marked an apparent turning point for the immigration strategy of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Trump has tried to defuse the tension by announcing that he is sending border czar Tom Homan, responsible for mass deportation policy, to Minneapolis, who will be his only on-the-ground interlocutor, instead of the controversial Greg Bovino, a top Border Patrol official who has led major raids in the city.
The president also had a telephone conversation with the state’s governor, Tim Walz, and the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, with whom he said he agreed on the need to calm the situation in Minnesota.
Filed under: Judge blocks deportation of 5-year-old boy
With information from EFE
