Thousands of people took to the cold and icy streets of Minneapolis on Friday to protest against the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Democratic-led city, as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown continues.
Across Minnesota, eateries, attraction sites and other businesses shuttered as part of a day of coordinated action to defy the weeks-long federal immigration operation underway in the state over the past few weeks. Organisers said the number of buisinesses that closed in solidarity with the movement numbered around 700.
Meanwhile, a separate protest outside Minneapolis-St Paul airport over the facility’s use for deportations led to the arrest of 100 members of the clergy.
The protests took place days after images emerged of an apparently terrified pre-schooler, Liam Conejo Ramos, being held by immigration officers who were seeking to arrest the boy’s father. The images rekindled public outrage at the federal crackdown, during which an agent shot and killed a US citizen on 7 January.
The superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, where the boy was a preschool student, said the child and his Ecuadoran father, Adrian Conejo Arias – both asylum seekers – were taken from their driveway as they arrived home on Tuesday.
The child was then used as “bait” by officers to draw out those inside his home, superintendent Zena Stenvik added.
One protester, who declined to be named, told news agencies he was marching “because if we don’t fight, we don’t win. If we don’t fight, fascism wins.”
He held a sign reading “five-years-old, dude,” a reference to Liam Conejo Ramos.
Thousands of ICE agents have been deployed to the Democratic-led city, as US President Donald Trump presses his campaign to deport undocumented immigrants across the country.
On a visit to Minneapolis on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance confirmed the five-year-old was among those detained. But he argued that agents were protecting him after his father “ran” from officers.
“What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?” he said.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk called on US authorities to end the “harmful treatment of migrants and refugees.”
Arias, the father of the boy, was at a Texas detention facility, according to an ICE database that does not list the whereabouts of under-18s.
‘Experts in dealing with children’
Border Patrol senior official Gregory Bovino defended his officers’ treatment of Ramos, telling reporters on Friday: “I will say unequivocally that we are experts in dealing with children.”
ICE commander Marcos Charles said “my officers did everything they could to reunite him with his family” and alleged that the family refused to open the door to him after his father left him and ran from officers.
They would be detained “pending their immigration proceedings”, he added, after alleging they entered the United States illegally and were “deportable.”
Ramos’ teacher, whose name was given as Ella, called him “a bright young student”.
In Minneapolis, where temperatures touched -23C on Friday, protesters wrapped in hats, gloves and scarves chanted “ICE out” as part of a broader anti-ICE day of action.
Separately, protesters picketed outside Minneapolis-St Paul airport over the facility’s use for deporting those swept up in immigration raids.
Methodist pastor Mariah Furness Tollgaard said in a statement that 100 members of clergy were arrested while demonstrating at the airport.
“As a faith leader in Minnesota, my tradition teaches that every person bears the image of God and is worthy of dignity and safety, and in this moment, all people of faith and moral conscience must stand up,” she said.
They were issued misdemeanour citations of trespassing and failure to comply with a peace officer before being released, a Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesperson said.
‘Just a baby’
Former US vice president Kamala Harris said she was “outraged” by Ramos’ detention and called him “just a baby”.
He is one of at least four children detained in the same Minneapolis school district this month, administrators said.
Minneapolis has been rocked by increasingly tense protests since federal agents shot and killed US citizen Renee Good on 7 January.
An autopsy concluded that the killing was a homicide, a classification that does not automatically mean a crime was committed.
The officer who fired the shots that killed Good, Jonathan Ross, has neither been suspended nor charged.
Marc Prokosch, the lawyer for Ramos and his father, said they followed the law in applying for asylum in Minneapolis, a sanctuary city where police do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Minnesota has sought a temporary restraining order for the ICE operation in the state which, if granted by a federal judge, would pause the sweeps. There will be a hearing on the application Monday.
