A federal judge has ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, according to a ruling obtained by CNN.
Liam and his father, Adrian, were taken by immigration agents from his snowy suburban Minneapolis driveway and sent 1,300 miles to a Texas detention facility designed to detain families. They have been detained for more than a week.
The order specifies the preschooler and his father be released "as soon as practicable" and no later than Tuesday as their immigration case proceeds through the court system. The ruling, shared with CNN by the judge’s courtroom deputy, was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
"We are now working closely with our clients and their family to ensure a safe and timely reunion," the family’s lawyers said in a Saturday statement. "We are pleased that the family will now be able to focus on being together and finding some peace after this traumatic ordeal."
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Immigrants seeking asylum walk at the ICE South Texas Family Residential Center on Aug. 23, 2019, in Dilley, Texas.
READ: District judge’s scathing opinion ordering release of 5-year-old Liam Ramos and father
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In a scathing opinion, which at times read more like a civics lesson, US District Judge Fred Biery admonished "the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence" and quoted Thomas Jefferson’s grievances against "a would-be authoritarian king," saying today people "are hearing echos of that history."
Liam’s detention – and the striking photo of an agent clutching the boy’s Spider-Man backpack as he stared from under a cartoon bunny hat – fed mounting outrage over the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and renewed the question: What happens to children when their parents are abruptly taken by ICE?
In another diversion from the norms of judicial writing, the judge included the now famous image of Liam at the end of his opinion, under his signature, along with references to the Bible passages Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35.
Liam’s case, Biery wrote, originated in "the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children."
"Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency," wrote the judge. "And the rule of law be damned."
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They were asylum seekers and refugees in Minnesota. Still, ICE detained and flew them to Texas to face deportation
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Biery also took aim
mgmarket6 at administrative warrants, which federal immigration agents often use to make arrests and which do not require a judge’s signature. "Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster," he wrote. "That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer."
Biery noted Liam and his father may well end up facing deportation anyway due to what he called the "arcane" US immigration system – but "that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place."