New footage emerges of boy, 5 being detained by ICE agents

New footage has captured the moment masked federal agents detained a five-year-old boy in Minneapolis.

Liam Conejo Ramos and his dad, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were detained by Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Tuesday.

Video obtained by CBS News shows the boy being taken from the driveway after just arriving home from preschool.

Bystanders can be heard screaming and honking their horns as Liam is marched out by an agent holding his Spider-Man backpack.

One onlooker shouted: ‘Where’s your humanity? That’s a kid. That is a child.’

Agents escorted Liam inside a blacked-out vehicle, while onlookers loudly blew whistles.

A photograph of Liam, wearing an oversized bunny hat and winter coat, being taken into custody sparked fierce criticism yesterday.

The image, released by school officials, does not show Adrian, who had come to the US from Ecuador in 2024.

School bosses and Trump administration officials have offered conflicting accounts of the arrest made in snow-covered Columbia Heights.

US Vice President JD Vance insisted that ICE agents were left with no other choice but to detain the boy.

He told reporters: ‘What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?

‘Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?’

Liam and Adrian were taken more than 1,300 miles south to an immigration detention centre in Dilley, Texas.

Vance claimed the boy was taken by agents because his father fled the scene.

He said: ‘The five-year-old was not arrested … his dad was an illegal alien and when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran.’

Vance, who stressed that he is a father of a five-year-old, said no adult should be given ‘immunity’ from asylum laws for being a parent.

The VP’s version of events aligned closely with the Department of Homeland Security, which said Adrian ‘abandoned’ his child.

The agency said on X: ‘For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias.’

Lawyers representing Liam and Adrian say that the father and son are not ‘illegal aliens’, an American term for immigrants.

School officials say Liam was the fourth child in the district to be detained in the past two weeks, part of Donald Trump’s surge in deportation orders.

Two were of high school age, while one was a 10-year-old girl arrested with her mother while walking to school.

School bosses questioned why young children are being detained, given that the Trump administration says its crackdown is to detain criminals.

Superintendent Zena Stenvik said: ‘Why detain a five-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.’

While the government is claiming Liam was left behind, Stenvik said she heard an adult in the family home ‘begging’ to care for the boy.

Agents, however, refused to allow it, instead reportedly leading Liam to his front door to knock to see if anyone else was inside, Stenvik said.

She claimed that ICE, which has more than 3,000 agents in Minnesota, is using Liam as ‘bait’.

A GoFundMe which has raised nearly $200,000 for Liam and Adrian’s legal fees, which says the family is doing ‘everything they can to reunite’ them.

The arrest occurred only a 25-minute drive away from where an ICE agent shot and killed Minneapolis local Renée Nicole Good, earlier this month.

Officer Jonathan Ross fired three times at Good, 37, as she tried to drive her SUV away from the ICE’s operation.

One resident of rural Minnesota compared ICE to a ‘wrecking ball’ taking a swing at the state.

She told Metro that immigrant families are too scared to leave their homes, as government-affiliated vehicles have been spotted in her small town.

She said: ‘If people are homebound and too afraid to leave, they’re not getting supplies like medicines.’

The local, who declined to share her name out of fear of retaliation, said there is ‘no line’ Donald Trump wouldn’t cross.

She added: ‘We have to resist.’

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