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

The father of a 5-year-old boy who was detained by immigration officers and held at an federal facility in Texas denied government accounts Monday that he abandoned his son as the pair returned to Minnesota.

Adrian Conejo Arias, who is originally from Ecudador, told ABC News that he loves his son, Liam, and would never abandon him, disputing statements from the Department of Homeland Security, which alleged that Arias had left his child in a vehicle. He also said his son got sick while in federal custody but was denied medicine.

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.

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.

Ecuadorians, who left in droves in recent years as their country spiraled into violence, have fared poorly in immigration court, with judges granting asylum in 12.5% of decisions in the 12-month period through September, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering and research organization based at Syracuse University.

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.