NEED TO KNOW
- Liam and Adrian Conejo Ramos were detained by ICE officers on Jan. 20 and transported to the Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas
- The father and son were released and returned to Minneapolis, Minn. on Sunday, Feb. 1
- The school district Liam attends received a bomb threat the next day, prompting a district closure
The school district that 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos is enrolled in received bomb threats on Monday, Feb. 2.
The Columbia Heights Public Schools announced in a news release that the schools across Minneapolis, Minn., would be closed after several schools in the district received bomb threats.
“Out of an abundance of caution,” the classes were canceled for the day and will resume on Tuesday, Feb. 3. PEOPLE reached out to the school district for comment.
Several local agencies are investigating the threats and the source. No suspicious packages or devices were located.
The Minneapolis-based school district is attended by the preschooler who was detained alongside his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Jan. 20. The two were released from the Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas on Sunday, Feb. 1.
Courtesy of Columbia Heights Public Schools
While in detention for over a week, Liam’s health was “not doing great,” Zena Stenvik, the superintendent for Liam’s Columbia Heights Public Schools District, told Huffington Post on Jan. 27. He fell ill and had a fever.
Liam’s mom, Erika Ramos, told Minnesota Public Radio on Jan. 28 that Liam was “getting sick because the food they receive is not of good quality.”
That same day, Democratic Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro visited Liam and Adrian at the family residential center and documented his visit on X. According to Castro, Adrian said Liam was “sleeping a lot because he’s been depressed and sad.”
The father and son were detained in their driveway after arriving home from preschool on Jan. 20. Erika, who is three months pregnant, told MPR News that Adrian did not flee the scene.
After Adrian was detained, the ICE agents noticed her, and they took a crying Liam to her front door. The ICE agents asked Liam — who was wearing a blue hat with ears and a Spider-Man backpack — to knock on the door to his home to see if any other people were inside, essentially “using a 5-year-old as bait,” The Washington Post reported, citing Columbia Heights Public Schools.
Erika told MPR the agents knocked on the door while Liam said, “Mommy, open the door.”
She said her husband had yelled for her not to leave the house.
Rep. Joaquin Castro/Instagram
Another adult living in the home, whose identity hasn’t been shared, was outside at the time and “begged the agents” to leave Liam with them. But ICE agents refused, the school district said, according to The Washington Post.
Liam’s older brother, a middle school student, returned home 20 minutes later to find his father and little brother had been taken away, according to the outlet.
Though DHS has claimed that Adrian, who is from Ecuador, entered the country illegally in December 2024, the family’s attorneys say he and Liam legally entered the country, and each has an active asylum claim.
On Saturday, Jan. 31, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery for the Western District of Texas ordered the release of Liam and called out the “government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence,” according to the order obtained by The New York Times.
He pointed out an “ill-conceived and incompetently government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”
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Once Liam and Adrian boarded their flight back to Minneapolis, Adrian said, “I’m happy to finally be going home,” according to ABC News.
“I love my son too much,” Adrian told ABC News after their release. “I would never abandon him.”
