The arrest and detention of Liam Conejo Ramos, the Minnesota 5-year-old in a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack, has drawn the attention — and the ire — of the nation. As an immigration lawyer who has worked with dozens of families at the immigration detention facility in Dilley, Texas, where Liam and his father are now detained, I know he is far from exceptional.
In March 2025, the Trump administration resumed the long-term detention of families, holding them for weeks or months, a practice that the Biden administration had halted in December 2021.
I’ve spent the past seven months trying to restore freedom to these families and to give them a fair opportunity to stay in the United States.
Children all across the country are being arrested and detained.
They are being arrested at airports, at the border, at immigration courts, at immigration check-in appointments, on their way to and from schools, at parks, on the street and anywhere else they can be found.
From January to October 2025, at least 3,800 children under the age of 18, including 20 infants, were arrested and detained by U.S. immigration authorities.
Since March 2025, many hundreds of families with children who are minors have been detained in federal immigration custody, with more than 1,700 children in custody since family detention centers reopened. Many have been detained for long periods of time, some for nearly half a year.
The children at Dilley with whom I’ve worked over the past year range in age from 2 to 16 years old.
They are citizens of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Honduras and Russia.
A 2-year-old boy was breastfeeding in detention. One 6-year-old boy had leukemia. An 8-year-old girl began wetting the bed. A 14-year-old girl engaged in self-harm.
All of these children and their parents were detained despite being eligible for release — ICE has the authority to release these families, who are not flight risks, on parole — and while seeking asylum and other humanitarian protections in the United States.
None of these children or their parents had a criminal history anywhere in the world.
The family detention facility at Dilley is a hellhole.
Children and parents consistently report not having access to sufficient potable water, palatable food (both children and parents have told me they found worms in their meals), adequate medical care or meaningful educational opportunities.
Lights are left on 24 hours a day, making it difficult to sleep. Officers have repeatedly threatened to separate families, including those I represent.
Many of the children detained at Dilley had been living in the United States for years, before they were apprehended and taken to Texas.
