DHS Secretary Noem Responds to Ruling Over Detention of 5-Year-Old  

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has responded after a federal judge’s ruling claimed the department is “traumatizing children.”

Federal Judge Fred Biery for the Western District of Texas, appointed by President Bill Clinton, on Saturday ordered the release of a five-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father from immigration detention.

Biery asserted the case of the child and his father “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

Reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents taking a 5-year-old into custody in Minneapolis became national news about 10 days ago, when an image of ICE agents with a little boy in a blue hat and a Spiderman backpack went viral.

ICE agents sought to arrest the boy’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, when the man fled from agents on foot, “abandoning his child,” DHS said in a statement on Jan. 22.

ICE agents, according to the agency, stayed with the child, Liam Conejo Ramos, while his father was apprehended.

Federal authorities attempted to reunite the boy with his mother, but the mother refused to take custody of her child, even after officers “assured her that they would NOT take her into custody,” DHS reports.

Officers then abided by the father’s wishes for the boy to remain with him in immigration detention custody. The administration says Arias entered the U.S. illegally in December 2024.

However, the lawyer for Arias and his son says they entered the country legally as asylum applicants, Reuters reported. 

The lawyer claimed that Arias did not abandon his son, and that the mother would not accept custody of Liam out of fear of being apprehended, Reuters reported.

“Let me be clear: these families always get the opportunity to stay together,” Noem said Sunday on Fox News. “This child has been with his father, which was the father’s choice.”

Noem also denied Biery’s claim that DHS imposes “daily deportation quotas” on immigration agents.

Speaking of the father and his son, Noem said DHS “offered them the opportunity to go home, to send them back to their home country, if they would like to. The father chose to stay, and therefore, we’re following the legal process.”

Biery ruled that the detention of Arias and his son was unconstitional, in his order responding to Arias’ petition for habeas corpus.

“The Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son,” the judge wrote, ordering the man and his son be released and allowed to return to Minneapolis.

“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” the judge wrote in his order, adding, “[a]nd the rule of law be damned.”

The judge ended the order, writing: “With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike, It is so ORDERED,” before incorrectly dating it, “this 31st day of February, 2026.”

Biery did not address the immigration aspect of the case, acknowledging that Arias may still choose to self-deport or may be forced to leave the U.S. “involuntarily.”

DHS will pay illegal aliens $2,600 to self-deport through the CBP Home mobile application.

Over 2 million illegal immigrants have chosen to self-deport since January 2025, according to Noem.

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