Days after a federal judge in Texas ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, the federal government filed a motion earlier this week to end the family's asylum claims entirely. The move signals that the administration has no intention of letting a single court order slow down enforcement of immigration law — even when the case involves a child who became a momentary cause célèbre for the political left.
Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, originally from Ecuador, were detained on January 20 during Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. They spent 10 days in federal custody before the judge issued the release order. The pair returned to Minnesota last Sunday, escorted by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas).
Now the government wants them removed from the country.
According to The Hill, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement to The New York Times, was direct about the administration's position:
"This is standard procedure, and there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation's immigration laws."
That framing matters. The left has spent weeks casting the Ramos case as a symbol of cruelty — a 5-year-old in a blue hat and a Spider-Man backpack, ripped from his routine after preschool, held in a Texas detention facility. The image went viral. The outrage machine cranked into gear. And yet, beneath all of it, there remains an unremarkable legal reality: a family without legal status, subject to immigration proceedings, being processed through the system that exists for exactly this purpose.
The family's attorney, Paschal Nwokocha, told Minnesota Public Radio that the government's intent was unmistakable:
"The government was bent on removing this family from the United States."
He also noted that the legal team secured breathing room in the proceedings:
"We were able to get additional time to do what we need to do in court."
Nwokocha added that the firm is "fully committed" to fighting for his clients, though he did not specify the updated court timeline.
Rep. Castro took to the social platform X on Friday to frame the administration's legal motion in the most dramatic terms possible:
"Liam Ramos, 5, spent ten days in a Texas trailer prison. He got sick, missed his mother and school, and was afraid of the guards. Millions prayed, spoke up, and offered to do whatever they could to see him go home."
"But now, the Trump administration is trying to take him again."
"They are breaking legal precedent in an attempt to break this boy's spirit and all of the Americans who are praying for him."
This is the playbook. Find a sympathetic individual — ideally a child — and use them as a human shield against the enforcement of a law that applies to millions. Castro's language is calibrated for maximum emotional manipulation: "trailer prison," "break this boy's spirit," "millions prayed." What he conspicuously avoids is any engagement with the underlying legal question. Is this family legally in the country? Do they have a valid asylum claim? What is the legal basis for their continued presence?
None of that makes it into the post. It never does.
This is not the first time immigration enforcement in Minnesota has become a national flashpoint. Two fatal shootings in the state last month involving federal agents led to protests and calls for DHS reform. The political temperature in the state has been running hot, which is precisely why Operation Metro Surge was launched there in the first place.
Border czar Tom Homan announced Wednesday that around 700 immigration enforcement officers would depart from Minnesota after local officials agreed to cooperate with federal agents. That cooperation — the kind that sanctuary jurisdictions have spent years refusing to provide — appears to have produced a de-escalation. Enforcement works. And when local governments stop obstructing it, the federal footprint can shrink.
President Trump himself signaled his administration could take a "softer" approach — a development that received almost no credit from the same voices now howling about the Ramos case. The administration ramps up, local officials come to the table, and enforcement pressure eases. That's not cruelty. That's leverage working as intended.
The broader issue here extends far beyond one family from Ecuador. The American asylum system was designed for people fleeing genuine persecution — political dissidents, religious minorities facing violence, and individuals targeted by their governments. Over the past decade, it has been transformed into a de facto open-border mechanism, where the mere utterance of the word "asylum" triggers years of legal proceedings, work permits, and residency in the United States while cases crawl through backlogged courts.
Every attorney representing an illegal immigrant family knows the game. File the claim. Delay the proceedings. Generate media sympathy. Wait for the political winds to shift. The Ramos case follows this template to the letter. The family was detained. A judge ordered release. The government filed to proceed with removal. The attorney secured more time. A congressman generated headlines. And the actual legal merits of the asylum claim remain entirely unexamined in public discourse.
That's by design. The less the public knows about the substance, the more the emotion fills the gap.
The family now has additional time to respond in court, though the specifics of that timeline remain unclear. What is clear is that the administration intends to press forward. The motion to end the family's asylum claims is not an aberration — it is the policy working as designed. Cases are adjudicated. Claims that lack merit are denied. People without legal status are removed.
For those who find this uncomfortable, it is worth asking a simple question: what is the alternative? A system where any illegal immigrant with a young child is functionally immune from deportation? Where a viral photo overrides statutory law? Where a congressman's social media post carries more weight than a court proceeding?
That is not an immigration system. That is the absence of one.
A 5-year-old child caught in the machinery of immigration enforcement is a genuinely difficult thing. No serious person denies that. Children do not choose their circumstances, and the human cost of these situations is real and worth acknowledging plainly.
But acknowledging that cost does not require abandoning the law. It requires the opposite — a system efficient enough to resolve cases quickly so that families are not left in limbo for years, and a political class honest enough to admit that enforcement is not optional. The people who weaponize children's photos for political gain while offering no legal framework beyond "don't enforce the law" are not compassionate. They are unserious.
Liam Conejo Ramos deserves a resolution to his family's case. The way to get one is through the legal system — not through hashtags, not through congressional escorts, and not through the implication that immigration law should bend every time a camera finds a small face.
The motion has been filed. The court will decide. That is how a country of laws is supposed to work.