Fury grows as a five-year-old boy is detained in Minneapolis immigration raids, sparking protests and a city-wide strike amid political condemnation.
MINNEAPOLIS: US federal officials struggled to quell growing outrage over the detention of a five-year-old boy in a massive immigration crackdown.
Thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been deployed to the Democratic-led city as President Donald Trump presses his campaign to deport illegal immigrants.
The child, Liam Conejo Ramos, and his Ecuadoran father were taken from their driveway as they arrived home, according to the superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools.
Superintendent Zena Stenvik added that Ramos was then used as “bait” by immigration officers to knock on the door of his home to draw out those inside.
In defiant comments, Vice President JD Vance confirmed Ramos was among those detained but argued agents were protecting him after his father “ran” from officers.
“What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?” he said.
ICE commander Marcos Charles said his officers “did everything they could to reunite him with his family”.
He alleged Ramos’s family refused to open the door after his father left him and ran from officers.
Ramos and his father were at a “family residential center pending their immigration proceedings,” Charles added after alleging they entered the United States illegally.
Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino defended his officers’ treatment of Ramos, telling reporters “we are experts in dealing with children.”
Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro rejected Vance’s explanation and has been trying to locate the boy.
“My staff and I have been trying to figure out his whereabouts, make sure he’s safe, and also to demand his release by ICE,” he wrote on X.
Calls for a day of action against ICE and a general strike gained traction on social media, with a demonstration expected in downtown Minneapolis.
Anti-Trump group Indivisible Twin Cities called for a day of “No work. No school. No shopping” as part of a broader anti-ICE protest across the state.
Hundreds of shops, eateries and attractions closed their doors in protest, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported.
The UN rights chief Volker Turk called on US authorities to end the “dehumanizing portrayal and harmful treatment of migrants and refugees.”
Former US vice president Kamala Harris said she was “outraged” by Ramos’s detention and called him “just a baby.”
Ramos is one of at least four children detained in the same Minneapolis school district this month, local administrators said.
Minneapolis has been rocked by increasingly tense protests since federal agents shot and killed US citizen Renee Good.
Three activists were charged with disrupting a Sunday church service with a protest accusing a pastor of working for ICE.
The officer who fired the shots that killed Good, Jonathan Ross, has neither been suspended nor charged.
Marc Prokosch, the lawyer for Ramos and his father, said they followed the law in applying for asylum in Minneapolis, a sanctuary city.
Minnesota has sought a temporary restraining order for the ICE operation in the state, with a hearing on the application scheduled for Monday.
