Report: ICE Detained 5-Year-Old Boy To Use As ‘Bait’

ICE agents reportedly used a 5-year-old boy arriving home from preschool in Minnesota “as bait” to enter a home in order to detain his father.

From AP News:

Federal agents took Liam Conejo Ramos from a running car while it was in the family’s driveway on Tuesday afternoon, Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said during a news conference Wednesday.

The officers then told him to knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait,” she said.

Stenvik said the family has an active asylum case and has not been ordered to leave the country.

“Why detain a 5-year-old?” she asked. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”

A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agents were conducting an operation to arrest the child’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, who fled the home before being captured.

Marc Prokosch, the family’s lawyer, said during a news conference, Liam and his father are reportedly being held in a detention facility in Texas.

Prokosch added,  “Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do. So this is just cruelty.”

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