Father of 5-year-old detained in Minnesota disputes government assertion he abandoned the boy

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Arias fled on foot before he was arrested, “abandoning his child.” She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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," she said.

McLaughlin did not address Arias' statement that his son was denied medication while in custody.

Arias also said he was arrested unjustly and contended he was in the country legally, with a pending court hearing for asylum.

The comments come after a federal judge ordered over the weekend that the pair be freed. They were released Sunday and returned to Minnesota, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas.

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

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.

Bomb threats at schools

Even as neighbors celebrated the boy's return, police said school in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights, where he attends class, was canceled after bomb threats were called in. 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 schooling last week because many parents were afraid to come to school, even with volunteers patrolling school grounds during drop-off and dismissal times. Almost 200 students were absent one day in a school of around 570, said Kuhlman, compared to normal days when only 20 or 30 kids are 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.

McLaughlin said ICE did not target or arrest the boy, and she repeated assertions that his mother refused to take him after his father’s apprehension. His father told officers he wanted Liam to be with him, she said.

McLaughlin also said last month that the child was abandoned and that officers tried to get the mother to take custody of the child. “Officers even assured her she would NOT be taken into custody.”

Neighbors and school officials said federal officers used the child as “bait,” telling him to knock on his house’s door so his mother would come out. DHS disputed that description.

Marcos Charles, acting executive associate director of ICE enforcement and removal operations, faulted the father for “abandoning his child in the middle of winter in a vehicle.” He told reporters one officer stayed with the child while others arrested the father.

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.

In ordering the release of Liam and his father, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery blasted the administration, writing that the case had “its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review’s online court docket shows no future hearings for Liam’s father.

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 driving to school on Jan. 6. He said they were both in custody at the same facility where Liam and his father were held.

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, congesswoman say

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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.

Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. Lurye reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporters Jake Offenhartz and Giovanna Dell'Orto in Minneapolis and Bianca Vazquez Toness in Boston also contributed to this report.