The Columbia Heights Public School district has said that over the last two weeks, federal agents have detained four of its students in four separate incidents. One of those detained is 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who attends a district elementary school.
“Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Zena Stenvik, the Columbia Heights superintendent, told reporters Wednesday, January 22, according to MPR News.
Stenvik alleged that masked ICE agents apprehended the Minnesota boy in his driveway on Tuesday, January 20, while he was returning home from school with his father. “Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child, and was refused,” Stenvik said.
Who is Liam Conejo Ramos?
Ramos is a student at Valley View Elementary. Stenvik claimed that “the agent took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”
Agents later took the boy and his father away in a car, and sent them to Texas, per the outlet. Stenvik said Ramos’ family has an “active asylum case” with no deportation orders. “I have viewed the legal paperwork with my own eyes,” Stenvik added.
Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing Ramos’ family, said he is still unaware about the exact whereabouts of the child and his father. “Every step of their immigration process has been doing what they’ve been asked to do, and so this is just … cruelty,” Prokosch said, adding that Ramos’ family is currently going through an asylum application process.
“I’m exploring whether we file a habeas corpus petition to get him out, we’d have to actually file that down in Texas now,” he added.
Prokosch said that the 5-year-old’s detainment was “probably not” legal, adding that this is what is “going to make my job really difficult.” He added, “Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s moral. You know, yes, they may have the legal authority to detain a 5-year-old, but why?”
Ramos’ teacher, Ella Sullivan, said of the child, “He’s a bright young student, and he’s so kind and loving, and his classmates miss him, and all I want is for him to be safe and back here.”
Three other students detained
Columbia Heights district officials claimed that three other students, all under the age of 18, were detained by federal agents in recent weeks. One of them is a 10-year old student who is in fourth grade at a Columbia Heights elementary school, who was apprehended with her mother while on her way to class.
“During the arrest, the child called her father on the phone to tell him that ICE agents were bringing her to school. The father immediately came to the school to find that both his daughter and wife had been taken,” Stenvik said. “By the end of the school day, they were already in a detention center in Texas, and they are still there.”
Stenvik said that another student was “taken by ICE on the way to school” on January 20.
Last week, a 17-year-old student in the district was detained when “ICE agents pushed their way into an apartment,” said Stenvik.
“ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our children,” Stenvik added. “The sense of safety in our community and around our schools is shaken and our hearts are shattered.”
Stenvik claimed that about a third of fearful students in her district have stayed home in recent weeks. “This surge has changed nearly everything about our daily lives,” she said. “Students are watching abductions on their way to school, on their way home and through their windows.
Stenvik added, “Imagine the trauma of a child being picked up by masked and armed agents, seeing their parents in handcuffs and being used to attempt to lure their mother out of the house and into danger. What has become of our country?”
Several other Twin Cities school districts told MPR News that in the last two weeks, student absenteeism rates have been between 20 and 40 percent.
