Lawyers for the federal government have filed a motion to expedite the deportation of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old boy in a bunny hat whose image rocketed around the world after he was detained by federal agents in Minnesota last month during an immigration enforcement operation.
In an interview on Friday morning, Danielle Molliver, the immigration lawyer representing Liam and his father, confirmed the filing of the government motion, which she called “extraordinary” and possibly “retaliatory.”
A hearing in the case is set for later on Friday, and Ms. Molliver said she planned to request more time to plead the asylum case for Liam, and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, who are from Ecuador and entered the United States in December 2024.
Ms. Molliver said the family had legally entered the country through a humanitarian program. The Department of Homeland Security had charged that Mr. Conejo Arias had entered the country illegally.
A request to the department for comment was not immediately answered on Friday.
Liam’s detention last month prompted outrage in Minneapolis and beyond, and drew expressions of support for immigrant families caught in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown across the Twin Cities. Dozens of immigrant detainees at the site in Dilley, Texas, where the boy and his father had quickly been transferred, were captured in drone footage as they walked out and shouted in protest over the conditions in which Liam and other children were being held.
Less than a week ago, Liam and his father arrived back home in Minnesota after state lawmakers, lawyers and activists intervened and a federal judge ordered their release in a blistering opinion that denounced their detention as “the imposition of cruelty.”
But seeking to expedite deportation has become a common action against asylum seekers and other immigrants now battling their removal from the country in immigration courts. Since October, federal government lawyers have increasingly been asking judges to “pretermit,” or dismiss, asylum cases without hearings, asserting that applicants can seek asylum in other countries with which the United States has been working out new asylum agreements, including Honduras and Uganda.
“They are moving very fast,” Ms. Molliver said. “Their deportation could happen in a matter of weeks.”
Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter covering immigration for The Times.
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