Five-year-old Liam Ramos has been at the center of a national debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. This was in response to ICE agents arresting him during a visit to Minnesota. These heartbreaking images of the little boy have—and should have—raised widespread outrage at how our children are being treated in today’s immigration system. People have begun to compare this situation with other tragic cases from history.
Last week in Minnesota, law enforcement stopped Liam. His father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, was placed in detention along with him. In the featured photo, Liam wears his signature blue bobbled winter hat. He’s silhouetted by a very different scene, next to a sleek black car, with a dark-clad adult figure menacingly positioned behind him. The adult figure has their hand placed proprietorially on Liam’s backpack, raising questions about the circumstances surrounding the boy’s detention.
A second photo shows Liam at the door of a home, a masked ICE agent looming behind him. The photos generated passionate responses from both transportation advocates and government officials. They are collectively exposing the painful—and often shocking—realities immigrant families now experience across America.
Despite having ordered Liam released 14 days earlier, DHS asserts that Liam was detained for his protection. This occurred after his father supposedly ran away when agents attempted to arrest him. Liam’s family — like most asylum seekers — entered the United States at a recognized port of entry. This reality has caused countless people to doubt the reasons given for their prison detention. Their attorney, Marc Prokosch, made sure to highlight this point, stressing the legality of their entry.
Unable to bond out, Liam and his father have since been moved to a homeland security detention center in San Antonio. Through Liam’s lens we’re suddenly thrust into the context of past inflection points in our immigration history. They remind us of Alan Kurdi, the two-year-old Syrian refugee whose body washed up on a Turkish beach in 2015, and Elián González, the six-year-old Cuban boy at the heart of an international custody battle in 2000.
Liam’s case does not lack emotional weight. It illuminates a bigger problem that’s distasteful here—the abhorrent treatment of noncitizen children amidst the harsh policies of the Trump administration. Critics say these policies disproportionately target vulnerable populations. They send a harmful signal to the public about the administration’s stance on immigration.
Zena Stenvik, the new superintendent of Columbia Heights public schools, noted that the photos shown, including that of Liam Ramos, are emblematic of a larger truth. Many families across Minneapolis. “Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates,” said Tricia McLaughlin, further illuminating the difficult choices families face during ICE encounters.
In just the past couple of weeks, three other children have met the same unfortunate end as Liam elsewhere in Minnesota. Stenvik reported that a 17-year-old student was taken by “armed and masked” agents without parental presence, raising alarms about the methods employed by law enforcement during such operations.
Liam’s detention we’ve seen an incredible public outcry. This departure focuses attention on the timely and important discussions around comprehensive immigration reform and the use of Title 42 against asylum seekers in the United States. We call to implement policies that prioritize keeping families together and protecting the most vulnerable children from unnecessary trauma and harm.
Conversations about the impact of these detentions on parents, children, and communities continue. The photographs of the late Liam Ramos bring us vividly close to the cost in human life behind immigration enforcement statistics and policies. How the public reacts will shape future detours around immigration law today and enforcement practices tomorrow that are spreading like a virus throughout the nation.