The Trump administration is moving to deport a five-year-old boy who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minnesota last month.
Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, confirmed on Friday that it would seek to deport Liam Conejo Ramos, but denied a claim by a lawyer for the boy that it was seeking expedited removal.
The move was “extraordinary” and possibly “retaliatory”, his lawyer Danielle Molliver told New York Times.
“These are regular removal proceedings,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “This is standard procedure and there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.”
The boy and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were taken into custody by ICE agents on the driveway of their family home on 20 January. The pair was then flown more than 1,000 miles from their home in Minneapolis to a facility in Texas.
Nearly two weeks later, they were released following a judge’s order and returned to Minnesota.
The judge was critical of Mr Trump’s immigration crackdown saying that “the case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatising children”.
The five-year-old, who was born in Ecuador, and Mr Conejo Arias came to the US legally as asylum applicants.
Read more: My five-year-old son has nightmares after ICE detention
The Trump administration defended the move to detain them, with Homeland Security accusing Mr Conejo Arias of being in the US illegally, without providing details.
Mr Conejo Arias said his son “hasn’t been the same since all this happened”.
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A photo of child, wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack as he was surrounded by ICE agents, went viral and caused outrage among protesters and the wider public.
Their detention came between the high-profile killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 and US citizens.
