Why the Trump administration is detaining immigrant children – and what happens to them next

The detention of Liam Conejo Ramos, age five, marks the turbocharging of a policy discontinued five years ago

This week, ICE's detention of a five-year-old boy wearing a Spider Man backpack in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights quickly became a defining image of the Trump administration's hardline immigration enforcement. Furious critics, including many local politicians, seized on Liam Ramos's ordeal as glaring evidence that Trump's mass deportation campaign has little to do with crime and a lot to do with terrorizing children and their families.

A homeland security spokesperson said ICE officers took the boy into custody only after his father fled during an attempted arrest. The superintendent of the school district in Columbia Heights said another adult living in the home was outside during the encounter and had pleaded to take care of Liam so the boy could avoid detention, but was denied.