Dem Senator hacks ICE over child in custody as DHS says mother refused adoption

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois is accusing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement of “unnecessarily” taking a five-year-old child with her illegal immigrant father, after the agency said her mother refused to keep her.

In an X-Text with photos of 5-year-old Liam Ramos, Duckworth, the congressman’s second-in-command, wrote that “Trump’s ICE snatched this bright, happy 5-year-old from his driveway.”

“They shipped him 1,300 miles to suffer, without his mother, in a filthy facility in Texas. And now he’s sick. Democrats are fighting to end this cruelty,” he wrote, adding, “Liam is not a criminal. Let him go.”

However, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Public Safety Tricia McLaughlin sent a statement by Dr. Sean Conley, acting director of the DHS Office of Health Security and chief health officer, where he spoke about the child’s condition.

Conley said a pediatrician examined Ramos and “found nothing of medical concern.”

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“It is standard policy to provide medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody. This includes a medical, dental, and mental health screening within 12 hours of arrival at each detention facility, a comprehensive health screening within 14 days of being held at ICE or arriving at the facility, and access to necessary medical care and 24-hour health care,” Conley said.

The doctor added that “ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of the detainee is a priority for ICE.”

He said illegal aliens “are given three meals a day approved by nutritionists, including consideration for children.”

In response, Duckworth told Fox News Digital that “the Trump administration’s suggestion that keeping a 5-year-old child needlessly in federal custody is in his best interests is astonishing.”

“Detaining children like this is cruel, no matter what Trump’s DHS says,” Duckworth said, adding that “the best thing they can do for Liam is to return him to his mother.”

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Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos is led from a car outside his home in Columbia Heights, MN, on Tuesday, January 20, 2026. (Courtesy of Columbia Heights Public Schools)

Ramos was detained along with his illegal immigrant father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, by immigration authorities on Jan. 20 in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Both are being held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas.

Federal authorities were trying to take Conejo into custody in Minneapolis last week when he ran away from Ramos, who was coming home from preschool, the Department of Homeland Security said.

Some ICE officers stayed at the scene with the boy while others chased after Conejo, who was later arrested.

ICE officers made several attempts to get Ramo’s mother, who was inside her home, to arrest her son, but she refused, DHS said.

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Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

McLaughlin said that “the police even assured him that they would NOT be arrested,” but said that “the alleged mother refused to accept the child. The father told the police that he wanted the child to live with him.”

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“After the mother abandoned the child, the police followed the father’s wish for the child to stay with him. Father and son met in Dilley.” [Immigration Processing Center],” DHS said in the X post.

Conejo entered the US illegally in December 2024 and was released from the US by the Biden administration, DHS said. The family’s lawyer said he has an asylum application that allows him to stay in the country.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting Arias and her child.

Fox News Digital’s Louis Casiano contributed to this report.