A federal judge has ordered the release of Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son, Liam Conejo Ramos, whom immigration officers detained during a Minnesota raid.
The boy — seen in a now viral photo that showed him wearing a blue bunny hat outside his house as federal agents stood nearby — was one of four students detained by immigration officials earlier this month in a Minneapolis suburb, according to the Columbia Heights Public School District.
“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” U.S. District Judge Fred Biery wrote in a ruling published on Saturday.
“Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.”
The Ecuadorean boy and his father, who entered the United States legally as asylum applicants, were sent to a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, their attorney Marc Prokosch previously told Reuters.