The "ICE Targets a 5-Year-Old" Story Falls Apart

A media literacy exercise for critical thinkers.

The media wants us to think that ICE is targeting little children. It's a lie.

Before we get into it, I want to preface this story by saying this is one of the most incoherent stories I've seen in a long time. There is very little verifiable testimony, no video evidence, and almost everything rests on competing accounts. It's largely a case of he said, she said.

The story starts with Adrian Conejo Arias, an Ecuadorian national who applied for asylum through the Biden administration's CBP One mobile app at a Texas port of entry in late 2024. According to a court filing, he had a pending asylum claim.

It's important to note that a pending asylum claim does not grant immunity from detention. It does, however, protect against deportation while the claim is being adjudicated.

ICE planned to detain Adrian. When agents went to take him into custody, he was with his son, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos. ICE ultimately detained the father and took the child with them. Then, following a judge's ruling, Adrian was released from the detention center along with his son.

From there, a media narrative quickly formed: that ICE had targeted and detained a five-year-old child, and afterward, ICE had used the child as bait in an attempt to detain the parents.

That narrative went viral. The media kept the story in the headlines for weeks — publishing photos of the child, running profiles on Republican politicians expressing concern, and even falsely reporting that the child appeared at the Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny.

The problem is that the story, as it's been widely told, is very likely to be fake. I can't say that with absolute certainty — because, as we'll see, the evidentiary record is remarkably thin — but a logical, good-faith examination of the reporting we do have suggests the story does not pass the smell test.

Here's why…

In this piece, I cover:

How DHS' account vs. school officials' claims tell completely different stories
The interview with the mother that the mainstream media buried
Where the mother's own testimony supports ICE's claim
How the media purposefully misreported this story
How the media's narrative about ICE created this situation

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