Liam Conejo Ramos constantly worries about being detained by ICE again, his parents say: “My boy is very different”

Minneapolis — Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, whose detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement sparked global outrage earlier this year, constantly worries about being detained once again, his parents told CBS News in an exclusive interview. 

It’s been more than two months since Liam was taken into ICE custody in Minnesota, alongside his father, while wearing a blue bunny hat and his school backpack — a moment captured by photos and videos that reignited America’s polarizing debate over immigration enforcement. But his parents, in their first in-person interview, said their son remains deeply scarred by his experiences in ICE detention.

Adrián Conejo Arias, Liam’s father, said his son now regularly sees a psychologist. 

“As parents, it worries us a lot that he’s no longer as he was before and we’re worried this could last a long time,” Conejo Arias said during an interview in Spanish on Sunday in Minneapolis. “It does worry us that this will not heal quickly.”

Liam’s mother, Erika Ramos, said he’s been exhibiting signs of psychological trauma, including hypervigilance and isolation. 

“My boy is very different,” she added.

He’s more prone to acting up and behaving badly, she said. In school, Ramos added, Liam, once a playful and happy kid, no longer wants to go to certain classes or play with other children. 

“He sees police officers, and he says, ‘It’s ICE, Mommy,'” Erika Ramos said.

After spending two weeks at an ICE holding facility in Texas earlier this year, Liam and his father were released after a scathing ruling from a federal judge who said their detention had its “genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

But the family remains in legal peril, and is at risk of potentially being detained a second time and ultimately deported.

The federal government has continued to pursue the family’s deportation, recently terminating their asylum case and appealing the federal court order that allowed Liam and his father to be released from ICE custody.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said Liam’s family was ordered deported by an immigration judge after receiving “full due process.” The department urged parents like Liam’s to self-deport alongside their children.

Asked what scares him the most, Liam said, “la inmigración,” a term used by Spanish speakers to describe federal immigration agents.

“An injustice”

Images of the Jan. 20 ICE operation that led to Liam and his father being taken into custody made international headlines at a time when the Trump administration was facing intensifying scrutiny over a massive deployment of federal immigration agents in the Minneapolis area.

The administration later scaled back that campaign, called Operation Metro Surge, after the killings of U.S. citizens and Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol agents triggered bipartisan backlash. 

At the time, ICE said the intended target of the operation that led to Liam’s detention was his father, who the agency accused of being in the U.S. illegally. The family said they entered the U.S. in 2023, with the government’s permission, under a Biden administration program for asylum-seekers, known as CBP One, that President Trump’s administration shut down immediately after he returned to the White House. 

ICE also said Conejo Arias tried to evade arrest and abandoned Liam in the process. During Sunday’s interview, Conejo Arias categorically rejected the accusation.

“It’s not true what people are saying,” he said. Asked directly if he would abandon Liam, Conejo Arias said, “I never did and never would.”

ICE also said it tried to get Liam’s mother to take him, and that she refused.

Ramos said she did not open the door out of concerns she too would be detained. She said she thought about who would care for her other son, 13-year-old Tadeo, who was still in school at the time. Ramos added she believed ICE was using Liam as “bait” to arrest her.

Liam and his father were ultimately transferred to the Dilley family detention center in Texas, where they were held alongside other families with children. Conejo Arias called the time there “horrible,” saying the medical care was inadequate and that the food made Liam and other detainees sick.

“The most difficult thing was I couldn’t do anything,” Ramos said of the time her husband and son were in ICE custody.

“My desperation was to go and get them out, because I really did not understand why,” she said, crying. 

While she’s happy her family is back together again in Minnesota, Ramos, who is pregnant with another boy, said their lives have not been the same since her husband and son’s detention. She said she longs for some “peace” and the chance for the family to live and work in the U.S. without the specter of deportation.

But Danielle Molliver, the family’s lawyer, said they could very well face deportation if the appeal of the asylum case’s termination fails. And if the Justice Department’s move to suspend the lower court order that led to Liam’s release succeeds, the family could be detained by ICE again.

That is Conejo Arias’ biggest concern, along with his son’s mental health. He said he’s still trying to understand why his family was targeted for deportation.

“I think it was an injustice that they did that to us, when in reality we were doing everything right,” he said.