ICE’s purposeful, cruel blunders
Many of the searing political moments of our time prompt stick-in-the-mind photographs, like the image from the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, of Black residents of Birmingham, Ala., being sprayed by powerful fire hoses.
Or the image of the young girl kneeling next to the body of one of the students shot dead at Kent State University.
Closer in time, there are the photographs of the rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, scaling the outside of the U.S. Capitol and spearing police with the sharp ends of American flag poles.
The current crisis in Minneapolis has spawned several tragic images that will be recalled long after matters are settled there. The first is that of Renee Good, behind the wheel of her vehicle, looking straight into the camera seconds before she is fatally shot by a federal agent.
Another is the photograph of ICU nurse Alex Pretti lying mortally wounded on the street while federal police fire additional bullets into his body.
A third image is that of a 5-year-old boy returning home from preschool and being taken into custody by ICE agents. Liam Conejo Ramos was photographed bundled in a plaid winter coat and a blue and white bunny-eared knit cap. He is standing in the cold and snow while an officer has one hand on the Spiderman backpack strapped to Liam’s tiny back.
Liam is starring straight ahead. He looks, in the moment, angelic. He is a blameless, innocent little boy.
Liam’s family came to this country in December 2024. They are Ecuadorans. Following their arrest, Liam and his father were flown 1,300 miles to Texas, where they were placed in a federal detention facility.
According to family lawyer Marc Prokosch, the dad, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, has no criminal record.
“These are not illegal aliens,” Prokosch told the press. “They were following all established protocols, pursuing their claim for asylum, showing up for their court hearings, and posed no safety, no flight risk and never should have been detained.”
The lawyer said the family entered the country at an official port of entry, where they surrendered themselves to U.S. authorities and asked for asylum.
The Department of Homeland Security disputes this description of things. The government also says Arias, in trying to elude capture, abandoned his son in an idling vehicle.
According to Columbia Heights school superintendent Zena Stenvik, who rushed to the arrest scene, an agent directed Liam to knock on the family’s front door to be let inside, “in order to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”
What would have been the harm if the federal agents, seeing the child with his dad, had simply backed off and decided to arrest Arias at another time, to spare Liam the trauma of seeing his dad taken into custody?
For that matter, why didn’t agents simply take Renee Good into custody later at her home, if they thought she had unlawfully obstructed official business, instead of killing her? They already had her license plate number.
And why, when eight agents had an unarmed Alex Pretti surrounded and pinned down, didn’t they just leave well enough alone? Did they really have to shoot him 10 times in a space of less than five seconds?
Stephen Miller, the black knight of immigration policy, told the New York Times as far back as 2023 that if Donald Trump got a second chance, he would “unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown.”
President Barack Obama was tough on illegal immigration, so much so that he drew the ire of immigration advocates. But, as veteran reporter Dan Balz pointed out this week, “Obama did not terrorize cities with displays of massive force. There are ways to enforce the law and ways not to.”
The libertarian Cato Institute revealed late last year that from October through Nov. 15, 2025, “only 5% of individuals booked into ICE detention had a violent criminal conviction.”
According to David J. Bier of Cato, a majority of the so-called criminals in ICE custody were convicted of minor offenses, such as traffic and even immigration violations.
Cato’s snap shot of ICE is that of an agency grabbing “easy targets to meet arbitrary arrest quotas.” So much for apprehending “the worst of the worst.” And so much for the lost innocence of a little fella named Liam.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail. He is the author of the books JFK Rising and Troubled Times.