ICE Took Liam Conejo Ramos. His Classmates Have Something to Say.
January 31, 2026 | Minneapolis, MN
Update: A federal judge on Saturday ordered the release of Liam Ramos and his father from immigration custody.
“You are scaring schools, people and the world,” one student at Valley View Elementary, just outside Minneapolis, wrote to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Exactly a year after President Trump’s second inauguration, ICE agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old pre-kindergartner at Valley View.
In and around Minneapolis, a city under siege by federal immigration authorities, scores of students are staying home out of fear of being abducted or have had family members who have been taken. As supplies for families too scared to leave their homes line the hallways of the school, immigration patrols rove outside and Liam languishes in a detention camp more than a thousand miles away, students have written letters to ICE agents.
For the video above, Times Opinion asked some of them if they were willing to share their writing.
“I think you should make friends with the world. Love, a Valley View student,” one child concluded.
