“With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,” Judge Fred Biery signed this Saturday his flaming statementstating that five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father should be released by Tuesday. At the bottom of the document he places the photo that went around the world. The toddler wearing a big blue hat with bunny ears and legs on strings on his head – and an immigration agent holding tight to the Spiderman backpack he is wearing.
Father Adrian, originally from Ecuador, and his son Liam were arrested by immigration authorities ICE on January 20 at their residence near Minneapolis and transferred to a detention center in Texas – almost two thousand kilometers away from Minneapolis. The photos of Liam surrounded by masked ICE agents sparked outrage worldwide.
Also with Judge Samuel Frederick Biery (78), who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993. In his statement he criticizes Trump and his arrest policy. “It is incompetent government policy to want to meet deportation quotas every day.” Even the “traumatization of children” is apparently not an obstacle, he writes in his three-page document.
‘Jesus wept’
And Biery doesn’t stop there. “Some of us show that the cruelty committed by the insidious lust for unbridled power knows no bounds.” These people show that they are “deprived of human dignity, and that the rule of law can be stolen from them.” Under Liam’s photo he has written two Bible verses, including John 11:35: “Jesus wept.”
In just over a week, five-year-old Liam, alongside the slain Alex Pretti and Renee Good, has become one of the faces of victims of ICE’s crackdown. Were still next to Liam four other children of families from the same school district were arrested and put in detention in Texas, one of whom has also been released by order of a judge.
According to the Trump administration, it was not the idea to arrest Liam, but his father wanted to keep him with him. They also state, according to The New York Timesthat “the alleged mother refused to accept custody.” Ramos’ lawyers are happy with the verdict and are working towards the early reunification of the “traumatized” family.
Also read
ICE detains toddler in Minnesota, photo goes around the world
The journalistic principles of NRC
