ICE agents have been deploying a new strategy these days. Instead of just targeting adults, they have decided to aim for children. This strategy is usually used when they try to detain parents through pressure. Unlike adults, kids don’t know what is going on, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to fight back against ICE agents. Sadly, such a fate occurred to a young preschooler, five-year-old Liam Ramos, from Minnesota, who was detained by ICE agents alongside his father. This incident occurred on January 20 around 2:20 p.m. when their car was stopped by ICE agents on their way back from school. The child, who was wearing his Spider-Man backpack at the time, was taken away. The mother, who heard the news, is now desperately searching for her son and her husband. So far, the latest reports indicate that the boy was sent to a detainment facility in Texas after being taken by ICE.
He wasn’t the only child taken away by ICE in Minnesota, as there were four Columbia Heights Public Schools students detained. Aside from the five-year-old boy, the school has also confirmed that another student is currently held in that same Texas detainment facility.
The reasoning for ICE agents targeting this Minnesota family was questionable at best, as the family reported that they were following the law and are currently seeking asylum to become legal U.S. citizens. The family is now trying to pursue legal action and pressure ICE into releasing the boy so he can return to live with his family back in Minnesota.
Online, internet users were enraged at what they were seeing. It was bad enough that ICE agents in Minnesota detained adults, but now children were also being targeted. “That poor child. He’s just a baby still,” one user said. Others wondered how government officials and ICE agents could even go to sleep without feeling guilt for what they did to people in Minnesota.
Some users remarked that people should start making databases of everyone getting taken by ICE in Minnesota to make sure that nobody goes missing and is forgotten. “This is exactly why there needs to be an international database of people missing since ICE started doing their raids, and their posters and pictures up for everyone to see, until they are found and their abductors face trial,” one user said.
Others, however, remarked that this wasn’t the first child to go missing. One user said, “Remember, there are still kids missing from the tender age centers from Trump’s first term. Sold? Sent to random foster families? Nobody knows.”
