Vice President JD Vance has sought to justify ICE agents detaining a five-year-child whose was reportedly “used as bait” during an immigration operation in Minneapolis.
“What are they supposed to do?” he asked, noting the boy’s father was an illegal immigrant who tried to resist being arrested.
As tensions between federal agents and anti-ICE protesters continue to spill over across the country, Vance headed to Minneapolis on Thursday to hold a roundtable with local leaders and community members.
Speaking to reporters after the event, the vice president was asked about 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was apprehended by immigration officials along with his father, shortly after arriving home from preschool on Tuesday.
According to Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of his local school district, an agent had taken Liam out of the car, led him to his front door and directed him to knock on the door, “in order to see if anyone else was home—essentially using a five-year-old as bait”.
Both the child and his father have now been taken to a detention facility in Texas.
Asked if he was proud of how the administration was carrying out its deportation strategy, Vance replied: “I’m proud of the fact that we’re standing behind law enforcement, and I’m proud of the fact that we’re enforcing the country’s laws.”
But the vice president, who this week announced he is expecting his fourth child with Second Lady Usha Vance, also sought to defend the operation.
“His dad was an illegal alien, and when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran,” said Vance, noting that one of his own children was also 5.
“So the story is that ice detained a five-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?
“If the argument is that you can’t arrest people who have violated our laws because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Vance’s visit to Minneapolis took place two weeks after mother-of-three Renee Good was fatally shot in the driver’s seat of her SUV during an encounter with ICE officer Jonathan Ross in a residential part of the city on January 7.
An autopsy released by her family this week found that the 37-year-old American citizen suffered three clear gunshot wounds, including one to her head.
After the shooting, Vance, President Donald Trump, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Good of being a “domestic terrorist” without providing evidence, and insisted that Ross acted in self-defense.
But with polls showing that a growing number of Americans disapprove of the way ICE is conducting itself, Vance took a much more conciliatory tone than he did in the aftermath of Good’s death, when he described her as a “deranged leftist” whose political ideology and actions led to her demise.
During an incendiary press conference at the White House on January 8, Vance also claimed that federal agents had “absolute immunity” to carry out their work.
But when asked about this today, he told reporters: “I didn’t say that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That’s absurd.”
Also on Thursday, he played down reports from local police who said people of color were being racially profiled, as well as reports of a leaked ICE memo from May that allegedly instructed agents and officers that they could enter a person’s home to arrest them without a judicial warrant.
As for taking the temperature down, he said, “Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic? No, we don’t… But if we had a little cooperation from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community.”
Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias and his son Liam are currently being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center, an ICE facility for families, according to CNN.
The five-year-old boy is the latest child caught up in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Earlier in a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that “ICE did NOT target a child. The child was ABANDONED.”
“On January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an illegal alien from Ecuador who was RELEASED into the U.S. by the Biden administration,” the statement said.
“As agents approached the driver, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled on foot — abandoning his child. For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias.”
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