Ten days ago, Jason Kuhlman, the principal of Valley View Elementary in Columbia Heights, Minn., got an urgent call over his school walkie-talkie.
“Kuhlman, I need you now.”
A 5-year-old boy at his school, Liam Conejo Ramos, had been detained by federal agents on the way home from school, in a case that quickly became national news.
Now, two more students at his school are in federal custody, after their mother was detained, Mr. Kuhlman said in an interview on Friday.
Mr. Kuhlman said he took the children to the B.H. Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on Thursday at the request of their mother, who was detained after leaving an immigration hearing earlier in the day.
The boys, a second grader and a fifth grader, had been in class on Thursday when the school’s front office got a message from their mother, saying she had been detained. At a school with 570 children, 25 families have had a parent or direct caregiver detained as part of the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps in the Twin Cities, Mr. Kuhlman said.
Mr. Kuhlman sat the boys down into his office, where he broke the news. “I said, ‘I have some news for you. Your mom is being very brave, however she was detained. She is asking us to bring you to her,’” he recalled.
Across the country, thousands of parents and children have been detained in recent years in federal immigration sweeps, which have ramped up with intensity in President Trump’s second term. The New York Times could not independently confirm the details of the family’s case. Parents of young children are typically given the option to be detained together.
Mr. Kuhlman declined to offer details about the family’s case, including their names, because he did not have the mother’s permission to release personal information. He said he had reviewed paperwork showing the family had an active asylum case.
The Department of Homeland Security said it could not comment on the case without the names of the people involved. It did not respond immediately to questions about the treatment of children in its care.
On Thursday, school officials stuffed the boys’ backpacks with snacks and school paperwork, and tried to make reassuring small talk during the 25-minute ride to the Whipple Federal Building. They drove past protesters who have been a near constant presence at the building, the first stop for those arrested in immigration sweeps.
As they walked up, a school nurse took each boy by the hand. The fifth grader, who Mr. Kuhlman believed was old enough to understand where he was going, began to cry.
Inside, he said he escorted the boys past armed guards and through security. The boys were still in their yellow polo shirts, their school uniform. One carried a backpack with the name “Messi,” for the international soccer player. In a waiting area, Scooby Doo played on the TV.
An agent eventually arrived to escort the boys through a locked door. “We gave them hugs,” Mr. Kuhlman said. “We’re crying; they’re crying.”
He spent the night hoping he would get a call to pick them up, he said. But on Friday morning, he learned the family had already been flown to a federal detention center in Texas. “They were taken that night,” he said.
An immigration official, Gregory Bovino, who had been running Border Patrol operations, recently said immigration agents “are experts in dealing with children,” noting that they often deal with families in immigration enforcement encounters. But critics, including immigrant advocates and some Democrats, have said children have been mistreated in detention in some instances.
Mr. Kuhlman was already worried about 5-year-old Liam, who is being held in a federal detention center in Dilley, Texas, along with his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, after being detained on Jan. 20.
Department of Homeland Security officials have said they were pursuing Mr. Conejo Arias, who is from Ecuador and who officials say entered the country illegally in December 2024. They say he fled from federal agents, leaving Liam behind and that Liam’s mother had “refused to accept custody” of him. Officials said they were not targeting the child, and that Mr. Conejo Arias had told agents that he wanted Liam to remain with him.
School officials have contested that account and said the federal government tried to use the boy to lure other family members out of the house.
Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas, a Democrat who visited the detention center this week, said that Liam had been depressed and not eating well. During their meeting, the boy seemed lethargic and lay in his father’s arms, Mr. Castro said.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked their deportation, while they dispute their case. In court paperwork, a lawyer for the family said that they had entered the country legally.
Sarah Mervosh covers education for The Times, focusing on K-12 schools.
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