Reunited! Father Of 5-Year-Old In Viral ICE Arrest Slams Government’s Claim That He Abandoned His Son (UPDATE)

Adrian Conejo Arias is clapping back at the government’s claim that he abandoned his son while ICE agents pursued him in Minnesota. Arias is the father of the 5-year-old boy, Liam, who went viral after footage showed immigration officers allegedly using the child to bait his father into detention. Reports from earlier this week suggest Adrian and Liam are reunited. ICE had ultimately detained and shipped them both to a holding facility in Texas. Amid the father-son reunion, Adrian is setting the record straight, while the government doubles down on abandonment claims.

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Father And Son Headed Back To Minnesota After Detention

Adrian is originally from Ecuador, per the Associated Press. He told ABC News that he loves his son Liam and would never abandon him.

The father’s comments contradict the picture painted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has claimed Arias left his 5-year-old in a vehicle. But Papa Adrian is denying the DHS narrative. Additionally, he said Liam got sick while in federal custody but allegedly was not given any medicine. Also, the father says his arrest was unjust. He said he was in the country legally, with a pending court hearing on his asylum application.

Adrian Conejo Arias spoke out after a federal judge ordered the pair’s release over the weekend. The father and son were released Sunday and returned to Minnesota, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas.

Homeland Security Says Adrian Arias Left His Son

Meanwhile, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Arias fled on foot before he was arrested, “abandoning his child.” She said ICE officers stayed with the boy.

“The facts in this case have NOT changed: The father, who was illegally in the country, chose to take his child with him to a detention center,” McLaughlin said.

However, McLaughlin did not address Arias’ statement about agents denying Liam medication while in custody.

The family’s arrest and release unfolded during President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration. This crackdown has led to daily protests that included the shooting deaths of two American citizens by federal officers.

ICE Agents Will Allegedly Wear Body Cameras

The president last week ordered his top border adviser to oversee the crackdown days after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital. Border czar Tom Homan suggested that mistakes have been made, but he said agents would continue to enforce federal law and called on local and state officials to cooperate with federal officers.

In the latest fallout, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Monday every DHS officer in Minneapolis would immediately be issued body-worn cameras. President Donald Trump said body cameras tend to be good for law enforcement “because people can’t lie about what’s happening,”

Bomb threats at schools
Neighbors celebrated the boy’s return but his school in Columbia Heights had to cancel class after receiving bomb threats. Authorities said they did not find any dangerous devices, and school was set to resume Tuesday.
Even before the threats, the district has felt under siege. Over two dozen parents of students at Liam’s school, Valley View Elementary, have been detained, Principal Jason Kuhlman said Friday in an interview, leaving children without their caretakers.
“We hate Mondays. And it’s because we find out how many of our parents were taken over the weekend,” Kuhlman said.
The school started offering online classes last week because many parents were afraid to come to school, even with volunteers patrolling grounds during drop-off and dismissal times. Almost 200 students were absent one day in a school of around 570, said Kuhlman. Normally, only 20 or 30 kids would be absent.
The boy with the Spider-Man backpack
The boy’s detention drew outrage as images of immigration officers surrounding the young boy in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack began to surface.
The government said the boy’s father entered the U.S. illegally from Ecuador in December 2024. The family’s lawyer said he has a pending asylum claim that allows him to stay in the U.S.
The vast majority of asylum-seekers are released in the United States, with adults having eligibility for work permits, while their cases wind through a backlogged court system.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review’s online court docket shows no future hearings for Liam’s father.
Other children in custody
Liam’s return gave some hope to other families in similar circumstances.
On Sunday, Luis Zuna held up photographs of his 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, whom he said had been detained, along with her mother, Rosa, while they were heading to the school bus stop on Jan. 6. They’ve been held for nearly a month at the same facility where Liam and his father were held.
Zuna sends them some money for calls and for food because Elizabeth especially doesn’t like the meals there. They’re from Ecuador and they’ve been in Minnesota for four years.
“It’s been really hard to come home and there’s nobody,” he said. “And they are there locked up. My daughter wants to get out of there.”
Carolina Gutierrez, who works as a secretary at the school that Elizabeth attended, compared the situation to Liam’s “but there were no pictures,” she said.
Zuna, following word of Liam and his father’s return, sounded somewhat optimistic.
“For me, it’s a hope that very soon I can also be the same, with all my family back,” he said in Spanish.
‘No beds, no real blankets’ at detention center, congresswoman says
A member of Congress who was denied entry into an ICE detention facility in Minnesota last month said she saw inhumane conditions when she finally got in over the weekend.
And on Monday, a federal judge in Washington issued a temporary restraining order requested by the representative and 12 other members of Congress against a Trump administration policy that had blocked lawmakers’ access to ICE detention facilities.
Democratic Rep. Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, who is a physician, said there was no nurse present during her visit and that no real medical care is being offered to detainees.
“There are no beds, no real blankets, minimal food, extremely cold temperatures. People are in locked cells, in leg shackles,” Morrison said Sunday in a social media post.
Morrison, along with fellow Minnesota Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig, were turned away from the facility on the edge of Minneapolis Jan. 10, three days after an ICE officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis.
While the three had an appointment, they were told after they arrived that members of Congress now needed to provide at least a week’s notice before any visit.
They were turned away even though a federal judge in Washington in December temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing limits on congressional visits to immigration facilities. Several members of Congress had sued earlier after they were denied entry to detention facilities.
On Monday, the same judge, Jia Cobb, issued a new temporary restraining order requested by the 13 members of Congress, including Morrison, after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Jan. 8 tried to reinstate the seven-day notice policy. The judge said the plaintiffs had shown a strong likelihood that they would win in the end.
Separately, another federal judge lifted a temporary restraining order prohibiting federal investigators from destroying evidence in Pretti’s shooting. U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud said he concluded authorities weren’t likely to destroy or improperly alter evidence. __
Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. Lurye reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporters Jake Offenhartz, Giovanna Dell’Orto and Bianca Vázquez Toness in Minneapolis, and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed to this report.

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Associated Press writers Mike Catalini, Steve Karnowski and Sharon Lurye contributed to this report via AP Newsroom.