Immigration raid: Court orders release of 5-year-old boy, father detained in Minnesota

A court has ordered the release of Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son, Liam Conejo Ramos, whom immigration officers detained during a Minnesota raid in the United States.

The U.S. District Judge Fred Biery gave the order in a ruling on Saturday, January 31, 2026.

The boy — seen in a now-viral photo wearing a blue bunny hat outside his house as federal agents stood nearby — was one of four students detained by immigration officials earlier this month in a Minneapolis suburb.

The judge said: “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatising children.

“Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.”

Outrage as US immigration detains 5-year-old boy, 3 other children in Minnesota

The Ecuadorean boy and his father, who entered the United States legally as asylum applicants, were sent to a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, their attorney Marc Prokosch told Reuters.

Prokosch and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return requests for comment.

Judge Biery, appointed by then-President Bill Clinton, blasted the administration of President Donald Trump in his three-page order.

He likened the Trump administration’s behaviour to that of the British king decried in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, including sending “Swarms of Officers to harass our People,” exciting “domestic Insurrection among us” and “quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”

Biery cited the Constitution’s requirement that an arrest warrant must be based on a judge finding probable cause of a crime.

He stated that the use of “administrative warrants,” issued by immigration officials, “is called the fox guarding the henhouse.”

The Star