Federal agents in Minnesota grabbed a 5-year-old as he returned home from school and took him to a facility in Texas, local officials and a family lawyer said.Liam Conejo Ramos is the fourth student from the Columbia Heights School District, just north of Minneapolis, to have been swept up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants, District Superintendent Zena Stenvik said at a press conference on Wednesday.Stenvik claimed Liam was detained in his family’s driveway after being driven home by his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, whom the Department of Homeland Security said was the subject of a “targeted” ICE operation on Tuesday and was also detained.DHS confirmed Thursday that both father and son are being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas. Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing Liam’s family, said he’s only been able to make “indirect” contact with Conejo Arias thus far, but sought to speak with him soon. The superintendent said ICE officers used the preschooler in an attempt to draw other family members out of their home.According to Minnesota Public Radio, Liam was told to knock on the door and ask to be let in so immigration officials could see if anyone else was inside.An adult who was home at the time, realizing that Liam had been detained, “begged the agents to let them take care of the small child, but was refused,” Stenvik said.Mary Granlund, chair of the Columbia Heights School Board, said Thursday that she also offered to take Liam; however, agents proceeded with the detention of the child. “There was ample opportunity to be able to safely hand that child off to adults,” said Granlund.Stenvik accused ICE of “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”Photos released by the district show agents leading the child, wearing a blue hat with bunny ears and carrying a Spider-Man backpack, to a vehicle in the snow.“Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” Stenvik said.Liam Conejo Ramos, 5, and his father were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota.Columbia Heights Public SchoolsDepartment of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin denied that ICE had targeted a small child in a statement.DHS also claimed on X on Thursday that ICE had conducted a “targeted operation” on Jan. 20 to arrest Liam’s father, calling him an “illegal alien from Ecuador.” The statement says he ran away from the officers when they approached him, but was “apprehended.”In a separate post, the department claimed Liam’s mother was in the house when he was detained. “Officers even assured her that they would NOT take her into custody,” the message stated. “She refused to accept custody of the child.”Granlund noted that Conejo Arias had told Liam’s mother not to open the door as agents detained him. “I would infer that the mother was probably fearful to open that door,” Stenvik said. The school district said Liam’s family has an active asylum case and had not been issued a deportation order.Prokosch said Thursday that the detention of Liam and his father smacks of cruelty. Conejo Arias entered the U.S. in 2024 and made an appointment at the southern border via the CBP One app. Since then, the family “has been doing what they’ve been asked to do” at every stage of the immigration process.“We have clients who, after they are picked up, are whisked away to the airport literally within hours,” Prokosch said. “The family is pursuing an asylum plan, which is lawful to do.”At a Thursday press conference in Minneapolis, Vice President JD Vance was confronted by a reporter about the 5-year-old’s detainment and whether he was “proud” of how the immigration crackdown was being conducted.In response, he pushed the emerging Trump administration narrative about targeting Liam’s “illegal alien father.”Vance said: “So the story is that ‘ICE detained a 5-year-old.’ Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death?” The other children detained in the Minnesota school district include a 10-year-old and a 17-year-old, who were both taken into custody alongside a parent.Officers stopped and detained another 17-year-old who was on his way to school on his own.President Donald Trump has sent thousands of Homeland Security officers into Minnesota in recent weeks, with ICE raids sweeping up noncitizens and citizens alike.In response, demonstrators have taken to the streets to protest Trump’s harsh immigration enforcement tactics, highlighted by an ICE officer’s killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, earlier this month.