Liam Cornejo Ramos and his father were detained by immigration officials in Minnesota on their way home from school.
A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of the five-year-old boy, whose detention by immigration officials in Minnesota last week sparked international outrage.
In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said the Trump administration must release Liam Cornejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Cornejo Arias, by Tuesday.
The father and son were detained by immigration officials on January 20 while Liam was on his way home from school. They have since been held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
A photo of Ramos during his detention, showing him wearing a blue hat and carrying a backpack, went viral online, sparking widespread anger.
“Observing human behavior convinces some of us that there is no limit to the greed for power and the brutality of actions, devoid of any humanity,” Judge Biery wrote in his order regarding the boy’s detention. “The rule of law has been abandoned.”
The Department of Homeland Security and representatives for Ramos and his father did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik, immigration officials questioned Liam and his father outside their home as Liam was returning from school.
A school board member who witnessed the father's arrest said she heard an adult inside the house pleading with the officers to let the child go.
The boy's mother, Erika Ramos, said she “saw it all from the window, but I couldn’t do anything. Adrian kept begging me not to come out because he was afraid they would arrest me too.”
She said that when immigration officials noticed her standing at the window, they pulled Liam out of the car and then brought her to the front door.
“They used my son as bait,” Erika Ramos said. “But my husband absolutely refused to let me go, especially since I was pregnant and we already had one child,” she said.
The Department of Homeland Security repeatedly denied using Ramos as “bait,” instead saying that Liam’s father abandoned him and fled to avoid arrest.
“For the child’s safety, one of our Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stayed with the child while other officers apprehended Cornejo Arias,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Friday.
Ramos disputed the Department of Homeland Security’s account.
“I’ll say it again, my husband never abandoned my son like they said,” she said. “No, he never did that.”
Minneapolis-St. Paul school district officials said Liam was one of four minors arrested by immigration officials last week.
Their arrests were part of a large-scale immigration crackdown by the Trump administration in Minneapolis called “Operation Metro Surge.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, the federal government has deployed 3,000 immigration enforcement officers to the city since December and arrested more than 3,000 undocumented immigrants.
In addition to the arrests of these children, the killings of 37-year-old U.S. citizen Renee Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers have also sparked public outrage and ongoing protests.
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