US Deportation of 5-Year-Old Liam and Family Continues

The US government wants to continue the deportation of the family of the 5-year-old boy who was arrested by ICE agents last month. The Ministry of Homeland Security has submitted a request for deportation to the judge.

5-year-old Liam Ramos was arrested three weeks ago with his father during the anti-immigrant action in Minneapolis. According to local residents and school employees, the toddler was used as bait to capture his mother.

Images of the toddler being taken into an ICE vehicle in his big blue bunny hat and Spiderman backpack went viral around the world. It sparked widespread outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration policies in the city of Minneapolis.

Liam and his father, who is from Ecuador, were held in an ICE detention center in Texas, on the other side of the country. They were released last Sunday after an order from the judge, who called government policy “thoughtless and incompetent”. The family resides legally in the United States because they have an asylum application pending.

The deportation request that the ministry submitted yesterday is standard procedure, according to a spokesperson. It would not be an accelerated deportation. She also says it is not retaliation, as the family’s lawyer had suggested.

Today there was a hearing in the family’s asylum procedure. There they asked the judge for more time to respond to the ministry’s request. That request has been granted. A new hearing date in their asylum procedure has not yet been announced.