A federal judge in the United States has ordered the release of a five-year-old boy and his father from a facility in Texas amid an outcry over their detention during an immigration raid in Minnesota.
According to Al Jazeera, in a decision on Saturday, January, 31, US District Judge Fred Biery ruled Liam Conejo Ramos’s detention as illegal, while also condemning “the perfidious lust for unbridled power” and “the imposition of cruelty” by “some among us.”
The scathing opinion came as photos of the boy, in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers took him away in a suburb of the city of Minneapolis, became a symbol of the immigration crackdown launched by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Biery wrote in his ruling, "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."
“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 district judge added.
The judge did not specify the deportation quota he was referring to, but Stephen Miller, the White House chief of staff for policy, has previously said there was a target of 3,000 immigration arrests a day.
The ongoing crackdown in the state of Minnesota is the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, according to federal officials, with some 3,000 agents deployed.
The surge has prompted daily clashes between activists and immigration officers, and led to the killings of two American citizens by federal agents.
