Fear and loathing in Minneapolis. Two weeks after the killing of Renee Good by an immigration agent, the residents of the Minnesota city are increasingly terrified by the presence of Ice.
There are those who fear leaving the house or getting into the car and even those who no longer want to send their children to school.
A few days ago a group of parents decided to patrol the area outside an elementary school, a few steps from the place where Good was killed, to make sure that the students returned home safely.
Adding to the anguish of many families is the arrest of four children in the last two days, including a five-year-old boy who was arrested in his driveway while returning from school and sent to a detention center in Texas.
According to the complaint by Zena Stenvik, director of the Columbia Heights school district, on the outskirts of Minneapolis, little Liam Ramos was used as a decoy to stop his father. The photo of the child wearing a blue wool cap and a backpack on his shoulders, flanked by officers with their faces covered and heavily armed, went viral on the web, causing shock and indignation.
“Why arrest a 5-year-old?” Stenvik said. “You can’t tell me this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.” Three other children from the same school district were arrested by immigration agents in the same hours: two 17-year-olds and a 10-year-old girl. One of the two 17-year-olds was taken from her car by armed agents with her face covered while she was going to school.
Another was stopped at home with her mother after “Ice forcefully entered the apartment,” the school district said. While the 10-year-old girl was arrested with her mother outside school.
The little girl immediately called her father but when he arrived he discovered that his wife and daughter had been taken to a detention center in Texas. The US Department of Homeland Security denied Liam’s arrest, claiming that his father, the real target of the operation, abandoned him to escape the agents.
“ICE did not target a minor,” reads a statement posted by the department on social media. «On January 20, ICE conducted an operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, who had been released by the Biden administration», the statement continues, reconstructing the story.
«When the officers approached the vehicle, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias fled on foot, abandoning his son. To ensure the child’s safety, one of the officers remained with him, while the other officers arrested the man.”
The fact is that father and son are now locked up in a center in San Antonio, two thousand kilometers from their home. According to the department, it was Conejo Arias who wanted his son to leave with him, but some family members claim to have “begged” the officers to leave the child with them.
Lawyer Marc Prokosch said in an email that they are not American citizens but “they scrupulously followed the legal process, showing up at the border, requesting asylum and waiting for the procedure to conclude.”