On Wednesday, KARE 11, NBC’s affiliate in Minneapolis, reported that officials from the Columbia Heights School District said four students had been detained by ICE agents over a two-week period, including a five-year-old boy.
During an afternoon press conference, Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik told reporters, “ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our children. The sense of safety in our community and around our schools is shaken and our hearts are shattered.”
District officials claimed that the previous day, ICE agents detained Liam Ramos, 5, “alongside his father as they were driving home from school.”
Stenvik asked, “Why detain a 5-year-old? You can’t tell me this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”
Anti-American Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar posted the KARE article to X that evening with the caption, “ICE just detained a 5-year-old child. Don’t tell us this is about “the worst of the worst.” That’s a lie. Absolutely vile.”
A Thursday update to the article said the Department of Homeland Security had confirmed to KARE that both Liam and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.
DHS informed the media outlet that “its agents tried to get Liam’s mother to take the boy but she allegedly refused and ‘abandoned’ him.”
In the meantime, Omar’s one-sided version of events posted the previous evening had quickly set off a firestorm on social media. The sensational claim that ICE had arrested a lone five-year-old raced across the Twitterverse overnight, triggering widespread outrage among the Left. Countless users echoed the story uncritically, denouncing ICE and amplifying what DHS later described as a false narrative — before the underlying facts had a chance to emerge.
Conservative influencer Allie Beth Stuckey described the internet reaction in a post on X:
On Instagram, it’s 2020 all over again. Women, including many, many Christian women, are being completely duped by the anti-ICE propaganda. Believed the “ICE arrested a lone 5-year-old” completely. It’s demoralizing. I am working HARD in my DMs and posts and on my show trying to combat this nonsense and appeal to these women. However, I felt like I was the only white evangelical woman questioning BLM in 2020, and I don’t feel as alone now. There are more of us 5 years later, and I am grateful for that.
On Thursday morning, DHS published a statement to set the record straight. The agency wrote:
ICE did NOT target a child. The child was ABANDONED.On January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias an illegal alien from Ecuador who was RELEASED into the U.S. by the Biden administration.As agents approached the driver Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled on foot—abandoning his child. For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias.Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration’s immigration enforcement. Parents can take control of their departure and receive a free flight and $2,600 with the CBP Home app. By using the CBP Home app illegal aliens reserve the chance to come back the right legal way.
But as I reviewed the reaction to Omar’s post this morning, an unexpected pattern emerged. While Democratic activists and political allies had rushed in to weaponize the claim, the broader response was far less receptive. A majority of commenters appeared skeptical, and many bluntly accused Omar of lying and spreading a false narrative.
Is it naïve to wonder if this reaction shows that Americans are finally learning from experience?
After years of accepting Democrats’ exaggerated—or outright false—claims, more people now appear increasingly skeptical, less willing to take emotionally charged narratives at face value, particularly when they are used to portray President Trump as a monster. If that skepticism is indeed taking hold, it mirrors a similar — and far more measurable — shift: the steady erosion of public trust in the legacy media.
Or maybe the public remembered that it’s only Democratic administrations that target children:
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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