The Department of Justice has signaled it will likely appeal a decision that forced ICE to release a five-year-old boy from detention.
Liam Conejo Ramos became the face of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation strategy this month after a photo of him went viral, showing him standing in the snow in a blue bunny-ears hat as ICE seized his father in Minnesota.
Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, were detained by immigration officers and held at an ICE facility in Texas until U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ordered their release this weekend.
“Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack. Thank you to everyone who demanded freedom for Liam,” Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said in a post on X. “We won’t stop until all children and families are home.”
But whether Liam remains at home is now an open question, after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche signaled that the department may appeal the judge’s ruling.
The department appears to have taken issue with Briery’s scathing assessment of “administrative warrants” which have been used to bypass the constitutional requirement for a neutral, third-party judge to authorize the search and entry of a private home of potential deportees.
“Civics lesson to the government: administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. This is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer,” the Clinton-appointed judge wrote.
Asked about the judge’s view on Sunday, Blanche told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “The immigration law, the body of immigration law, is much different than our typical criminal process because of the administrative nature of what we do every day. And so, to the extent that we need to appeal that judge’s decision, I promise we will,” he said.
“There’s a very meaningful dispute about whether they had properly applied for asylum,” Blanche added.
Blanche’s comments come as new figures reveal that the number of children in ICE detention has jumped more than sixfold since the start of Trump’s second term.
According to a Marshall Project analysis entitled Deportation Data Project, ICE held around 170 children on an average day under Trump. During the last 16 months of the Biden administration, ICE held around 25 children a day.
Some are being held at the Dilley Detention Center in Texas where Liam and his father were placed for a week.
But insiders have told the Daily Beast that the conditions at Dilley are appalling, with some families experiencing food contaminated with worms and mold, inadequate medical care and limited access to clean drinking water.
“Families are being snatched and torn out of their communities,” said Javier Hidalgo, the legal director of RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services.
“These are families that are in legal proceedings towards getting some sort of status or seeking asylum. The explicit goal of this administration, and we’ve seen this actually play out, is really to put pressure on these families to give up their case and to agree to go home.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Trump has consistently defended his deportation strategy, saying he was elected with a mandate to get rid of illegal immigrants, who he says were allowed into America in record numbers under the Biden administration.
However, ICE’s tactics have come under fire in recent months, with national outrage escalating following the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as well as the detention of Liam and his father.
Liam’s family had emigrated from Ecuador in 2024 and had applied for political asylum. No order of deportation had been issued against them, nor had any been accused of a crime.
In an interview with ABC over the weekend, Liam’s father Conejo Arias outlined the troubling conditions they faced in detention, which was hit by a measles outbreak on Sunday.
Inside, Liam became feverish, vomited, and grew lethargic. His father said the conditions were “not great” and alleged staff had no medicine for his son.
“We asked for medication, but we were told they didn’t have any,” he said.
