Vice President JD Vance has once again come under public scrutiny for his comments after attacking the family of Liam Conejo Ramos. He is a 5-year-old Minnesota boy who was detained by federal immigration agents alongside his father. The boy has now been escorted back home and reunited with his family.
Vance made the remarks on X in response to Rhode Island Rep. Seth Magaziner, who claimed that ICE is targeting immigrants who entered the country legally, and not “the worst of the worst” as the Trump administration claims them to be.
“If your position is that a person can claim asylum after traversing eight countries, and they are therefore ‘legal immigrants’ because the president ignores the law and allows them to stay, then you’re advocating for an open border,” JD Vance wrote.
According to The Irish Star, Vance said the Biden-era CBP One app was further criticized, called “illegitimate,” and claimed it implied violations of federal immigration law.
“The Biden-Harris administration literally created an app (it’s called CBP One) to digitize the violation of federal immigration law and allow anyone who claimed asylum to stay indefinitely. This is illegitimate, illegal, and the American people rejected it,” he wrote.
My position is that you shouldn’t send 5 year olds to jail when their parents followed the prescribed process & pose no threat.
If a judge denies their asylum claim and orders them removed, fine. But that hasn’t happened.
What happened to prioritizing “the worst of the worst”? https://t.co/vDaXgjP9Z5
— Seth Magaziner (@SethMagaziner) February 2, 2026
Magaziner defended Liam’s family, stating that children should not be detained when their parents follow the core legal procedures and pose no threat. Several other Senate members have also slammed targeting children in the ICE crackdown.
“If a judge denies their asylum claim and orders removal, that’s one thing—but that hasn’t happened,” he said. “What happened to prioritizing the ‘worst of the worst’?” he added.
According to the BBC, Liam Conejo Ramos was arrested from his family’s suburban Minneapolis home. He was in a tiny plaid coat and a blue knit bunny hat, as he seemed totally confused as a masked officer held the boy’s Spider-Man backpack. Liam was flown more than 1,300 miles away with his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, to a detention facility in Texas.
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He is now the fourth child from Columbia Heights Public Schools to be taken into ICE custody in just two weeks, district officials said.
Prior to this, three other students were detained by ICE in recent weeks, including a 10-year-old fourth grader, who was in a Texas detention center.
Liam’s family is originally from Ecuador. According to their attorney, Marc Prokosch, they presented themselves to U.S. border officials in Texas in December 2024 to seek asylum, for which they have been doing everything through legal channels, even if their claims remained pending.
“These are not illegal aliens,” Prokosch said. “They followed established protocols, attended their court hearings, posed no flight risk, and never should have been detained.”
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However, DHS claimed that Liam’s father is an “illegal alien,” and he did not correctly enter the country. Family members say economic instability and insecurity in Ecuador forced Adrian and his wife to flee in search of safety and opportunity.
Consequently, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias did not have a criminal record in Minnesota, according to his lawyer Marc Prokosch. Liam’s uncle said the family of three would often worry about detention and raise concerns about it on their family WhatsApp group.
Meanwhile, during a visit to Minneapolis, JD Vance defended the agents’ conduct, saying the father fled arrest and questioning what alternatives officers had.
“I’m the father of a 5-year-old,” Vance said. “You hear this story and think, ‘How did we arrest a five-year-old?’ But what are they supposed to do—let a child freeze to death or not arrest someone here illegally?”
