JD Vance attacks family of 5-year-old Minneapolis boy detained by ICE
Vice President JD Vance attacked the family of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who was detained by federal immigration agents in Minnesota along with his father, falsely claiming that the family entered the U.S. unlawfully
Vice President JD Vance attacked the family of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who was detained by federal immigration agents in Minnesota along with his father, falsely claiming that the family entered the U.S. unlawfully.
The vice president took to X to respond to Rhode Island Rep. Seth Magaziner (D), who argued that many of the families ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are detaining are immigrants who entered the country legally, and not “the worst of the worst,” as the Trump administration claims.
“If your position is that a person can claim asylum after traversing eight countries, and they are therefore ‘legal immigrants’ because the president ignores the law and allows them to stay, then you're advocating for an open border,” Vance replied to Magaziner.
“The Biden-Harris administration literally created an app (CBPOne) to digitize the violation of federal immigration law and allow anyone who claimed asylum to stay indefinitely. This is illegitimate, illegal, and the American people rejected it,” he added.
Magaziner was quick to further defend Liam’s family, saying he does not believe that federal agents should detain minors when “their parents followed the prescribed process and pose no threat.”
“If a judge denies their asylum claim and orders them removed, fine. But that hasn’t happened,” the Congressman wrote on X. “What happened to prioritizing ‘the worst of the worst’?”
According to DHS, Liam and his family entered the U.S. unlawfully from Ecuador in December 2024. However, according to the family’s lawyer, they have a pending asylum claim that allows them to stay in the U.S. Further, unlike what Vance claimed, under U.S. law, anyone who enters the U.S. and believes they are in danger of persecution if they return to their country can apply for asylum and is entitled to have a hearing.
The vast majority of asylum-seekers are released in the U.S., with adults eligible for work permits while they wait for their hearings. Currently, there is an immense backlog in the immigration system, leading many asylum seekers to wait for years for their hearings.
Federal agents took Liam, a 5-year-old student in the Columbia Heights Public Schools district in Minnesota, from a running car in his family’s driveway on Jan. 20. Images of the child wearing a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack went viral on social media, drawing national outrage at the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown strategies.
Officers allegedly told Liam to knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait,” the district’s superintendent Zena Stenvik told reporters after he was taken into custody. Liam and his father were then taken to a detention facility in Dilley, Texas.
Over the weekend, Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, were released from the Texas facility and flown back to Minnesota, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro said. Their release came after an order from U.S. District Judge Fred Biery.
“Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack. Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam,” Castro said. “We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”
Meanwhile, Biery slammed the Trump administration in his order to release the 5-year-old and his father, writing, “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.”