The 5-year-old migrant boy at the center of a dispute in Minnesota was abandoned in a vehicle by his father, and his mother refused to open the door and take him in, so ICE officers “cared for him,” Homeland Security officials said Friday.
They took the boy to get food and spent hours with him, said Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who has been heading the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota.
Officials said the father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, was being sought as an illegal immigrant with a deportation order against him. Officers approached him and he ran away, leaving the tot behind. The officers then took the boy to his home.
“When we approached the door of his residence, the people inside refused to take him in and open the door,” Chief Bovino said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers nabbed the father, who then decided he wanted the boy to stay with him in immigration detention. The alternative, ICE said, was for the family to be separated and the boy turned over to social services.
“Now they are being well-cared for at a family residential center,” said Marcos Charles, the acting head of ICE’s deportation division. “My officers do the right thing no matter how difficult or how long it takes.”
He said the boy wasn’t targeted for arrest but was abandoned in a vehicle in the middle of a Minneapolis winter.
He said the mother has not been taken into custody.
The encounter sparked heated accusations that ICE had targeted a young child for enforcement.
“Children as young as 5 detained,” blared the headline from The Minnesota Star Tribune. An official from the local school system, which publicized the incident, claimed that someone at the home had “begged the agents” to turn the child over.
“The onslaught of ICE activity in our community is inducing trauma and is taking a toll on our children,” Zena Stevnik, the superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, told reporters Thursday.
School officials said the dad was telling the mom not to open the door, fearing that ICE was using the child as “bait.”
But they said other adults were present who could have taken the child.
They identified the boy as Liam and said he was a preschooler in their school system.
The family came from Ecuador in 2024 and was trying to gain asylum, said Marc Prokosch, a lawyer for the family.
“These are not illegal aliens. They came properly, they came legally and are pursuing a legal pathway,” he said.
Chief Bovino said the mother had a chance to claim the child but didn’t.
“They saw the young boy, and they refused to open the door and take him back,” he said.
The DHS officials, during a press conference Friday, faced questions asking why the boy was now in custody.
Chief Bovino said it was the father’s request, that otherwise the boy would have been separated from his family.
He contrasted that with the way the criminal system handles arrests of parents. ICE has facilities for families, whereas prisons and jails generally do not.
“Many American citizens are separated when they’re arrested by the Minneapolis police department or any other police department,” Chief Bovino said.
