“You can’t tell me this is a violent criminal.” This is what Zena Stenvik, superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, north of Minneapolis, asks herself when faced with the photo of a 5-year-old boy arrested by relentless ICE agents in the same city where Renee Good was killed .

People are terrified by the presence of the anti-immigration agency: some are afraid to leave their homes or get into their cars, and some no longer send their children to school .

A few days ago , a group of parents decided to patrol the area outside an elementary school , just steps from where Good was killed, to make sure the students returned home safely.

Adding to the families' anguish is the arrest of four young people in the last two days . Among them, a 5-year-old boy was arrested in his driveway while returning from school and sent to a detention center in Texas .

According to the school district principal's complaint, the child was used as bait to arrest his father . The photo of the boy wearing a blue wool hat and backpack, flanked by heavily armed, masked officers, went viral online, sparking shock and outrage.

"Why arrest a 5-year-old?" Stenvik said. "You can't tell me this child will be classified as a violent criminal."

Three other children from the same school district were arrested by immigration agents at the same time: two 17-year-olds and a 10-year-old girl . One of the 17-year-olds was taken from her car by masked, armed officers on her way to school. Another was stopped at home with her mother after "ICE forced entry into the apartment," the school district said. The 10-year-old girl was arrested with her mother outside school . The girl immediately called her father, but when he arrived, he discovered that his wife and daughter had been taken to a detention center in Texas.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has denied Liam's arrest, claiming that his father, the true target of the operation, abandoned him to escape agents. "ICE did not target a minor," the department said in a statement posted on social media. "On January 20, ICE conducted an operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador, who had been released by the Biden administration. When agents approached the vehicle, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias fled on foot, abandoning his son. To ensure the child's safety, one of the agents remained with him , while the other agents arrested the man."

But now both father and son are locked up in a center in San Antonio , two thousand kilometers from their home. According to the department, it was Conejo Arias who wanted his son to leave with him, but some family members claim they "begged" the officers to leave the child with them.

The family's lawyer Marc Prokosch said they are not American citizens but "they scrupulously followed the legal process, showing up at the border, requesting asylum and waiting for the process to be concluded."

(Unioneonline)

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