Five-Year-Old Detained By ICE is Released After Judges Scathing Order

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, whose detention by immigration agents in Minnesota sparked widespread anger over the Trump Administration’s mass deportation agenda, has been released from detention.

He boarded a plane on Sunday morning in Texas with his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, who was detained with him, after a federal judge ordered their release a day earlier.

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The boy’s case gained national attention when he was photographed on Jan. 20 wearing a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack, being detained by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in the driveway of his home.

The image emerged between two high-profile killings by immigration agents in Minneapolis, and became to many another symbol of the brutality of President Donald Trump’s crackdown.

Ramos and his father, both Ecuadoreans who entered the United States legally as asylum applicants, were sent to a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

Read More: Minnesota and the Threat of American Authoritarianism

In a scathing three-page order, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery condemned what he described as a “perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty” behind the detention.

“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” Judge Biery wrote in a ruling published on Saturday, ordering the release of the boy and his father “as soon as practicable” but no later than Feb. 3. 

Judge Biery decried the detentions as unconstitutional, accusing the Trump Administration of displaying an “ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence.”

He included the viral photograph of Liam Ramos at the bottom of his order with references to two Bible verses: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,'” and “Jesus wept.”

Judge Biery noted that there is a chance the father and son may still end up in his home country, but called for that process to occur in a “more orderly and humane policy.”

The Ramos family’s lawyers said they were “working closely with our clients and their family to ensure a safe and timely reunion.” 

TIME reached out to representatives for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, for comment.

The DHS had previously defended the detention, saying it was carrying out “a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias,” Liam’s father. 

“Our officers made multiple attempts to get the alleged mother who was inside the house to take custody of her child,” the agency said. “Officers even assured her she would NOT be taken her into custody. The alleged mother refused to accept custody of the child.”

Liam’s mother accused the DHS and ICE of using Liam as “bait” to detain his parents.

“They used my boy as bait. Even so, my husband desperately insisted that I not go out, especially because we have another child and I am pregnant,” Erika Ramos told Telemundo in Spanish. “His only intention was to protect us, like any responsible husband and father.”

The family arrived in the U.S. from Ecuador, entering through a Biden-era immigration program that allows asylum seekers to await their appointments in the country without living under the threat of deportation. The program was later rescinded by the Trump Administration.

They were detained on Jan. 20 after returning from Liam’s preschool.

A lawyer for the family has said Liam’s father does not have a criminal record, and DHS officials have not said otherwise.

President Donald Trump and DHS head Kristi Noem continue to claim they are targeting “criminals,” even as children, immigrants without criminal records, and legal residents are being detained. 

Last weekend, a two-year-old girl was taken into ICE custody in Minnesota and flown to Texas with her father before being returned to her mother the next day. The young girl was removed from the state despite an emergency court order that granted the immediate release of the child.

The case of Liam Ramos has drawn national criticism of ICE’s tactics and use of force in Operation Metro Force, the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota. “He has become emblematic of the monstrosity of the ICE system and the detention system,” Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro said of Ramos in a Facebook video.

It comes as Minneapolis has become a hotbed of protests against the presence of ICE after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good in the city last month.