Media runs wild with ‘egregious lie’ ICE targeted 5-year-old in Minnesota, DHS says child was abandoned

Legacy news outlets ran wild with misleading claims from Minnesota Democrats that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained a child during an enforcement operation, illustrating how viral media “hoaxes” begin, according to watchdogs. 

Media outlets were quick to parrot Democrats, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who shared an image of a five-year-old boy named Liam Ramos and claimed he was detained by ICE while coming home from pre-school in Minneapolis. But the White House said ICE actually “stayed with a child who was abandoned by his father — an illegal alien from Ecuador,” and blasted news outlets for running with a “fake Democrat narrative without first getting the facts.”

ABC News published the headline, “5-year-old asylum seeker detained as ICE expands enforcement in Minnesota,” CNN went with “5-year-old boy taken by ICE in Minneapolis area being held with father at Texas facility,” The Associated Press headlined its story “Federal officers detain a 5-year-old boy who a school official says was used as ‘bait’” and Axios said “ICE’s detention of child puts new focus on Trump team’s tactics.” 

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Media outlets were quick to parrot Democrats, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who shared an image of a five-year-old boy and claimed he was detained by ICE while coming home from pre-school. (Obtained by Columbia Heights Public Schools)

The Washington Post’s report, “ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old,” had conflicting information. 

Journalist Drew Holden published a lengthy thread on X showcasing the way “these hoaxes start” with examples of media outlets burying, or ignoring, the information about the father abandoning the child. 

“The first thing that tipped me off was that the details didn’t add up. Washington Post claimed both that the father had fled ICE and been in the house when agents allegedly tried to ‘lure’ him out. That didn’t pass the smell test, and so I thought it might be a thinly sourced story,” Holden told Fox News Digital. 

“Turns out it was — the Post has since added a correction on this point in their piece. Plus, no one at the outlets was disputing the contention from DHS that the father abandoned the child,” Holden continued. “Given how politically explosive the story was, and how contrary DHS’s comment was, it seemed something was off.”

The Washington Post has since issued the following correction: “A previous version of a caption incorrectly said that Liam Ramos was used as bait to lure his father out of his house. It was to lure other people.”

Holden said a casual reader of much of the coverage surrounding the story would be clueless that the child in question was actually abandoned. He noted that the Washington Post initially took five paragraphs to “acknowledge what really happened,” while the AP didn’t mention the father ditched the child until the sixth paragraph. The Daily Beast waited 13 paragraphs for the critical tidbit, while Newsweek needed seven paragraphs. 

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Holden believes that “this sequence of events is how these media conspiracy theories take off” and dominate the news cycle. 

“Advocates are the source of thinly sourced stories that crumble under scrutiny. Legacy press runs those outlets pre-scrutiny, elected Democrats pick them up, and they become social media gospel truth. We saw it with Russiagate and other Trump-related stories,” Holden told Fox News Digital.

Heritage Foundation media fellow Tim Young believes legacy media outlets have misled Americans for years but “we only caught on to it with the prevalence of independent journalists and social media platforms” like X. 

“Without the combination of the independent journalists and X, the question really remains whether or not society as a whole would catch on to the fake news that’s being pushed.  The legacy media has always been left-leaning and always had an agenda – unfortunately not enough people have woken up to it now,’ Young told Fox News Digital. 

Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik said the boy had been taken by federal agents from a running car while it had been in the family’s driveway Tuesday afternoon. 

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Minnesota has been a hotbed of ICE activity as the Trump administration cracks down on illegal immigration. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The child, who at the time was arriving home from preschool, was later sent with his father to a detention facility in Texas.

“ICE did NOT target a child. The child was ABANDONED,” Homeland Security wrote on X on Thursday. “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,” it added. 

“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,” DHS also said.

In another post, DHS wrote: “Our officers made multiple attempts to get the mother inside the house to take custody of her child. Officers even assured her that they would NOT take her into custody. She refused to accept custody of the child. The father told officers he wanted the child to remain with him. Our officers’ primary concern during the entire operation was the safety and welfare of the child. Following the mother’s abandonment of the child, officers abided by the father’s wishes to keep the child with him. Father and son are together at Dilley [Immigration Processing Center].”

The DHS has called the mainstream narrative a “horrific smear pushed by the media and anti-ICE activists,” and claimed the agents got the boy food from McDonald’s and played his favorite music to comfort him. 

“The double standard being foisted upon the public in real time is something to behold. There are few issues that see more media manipulation based on emotion than illegal immigration. The school, the family members, the neighbors are all being taken at their word in full by the left, but anything out of Homeland Security is being treated as anywhere from dubious to a pants-on-fire lie,” NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck told Fox News Digital. 

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Vice President JD Vance commented on the situation Thursday.

“When they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So, the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old,” Vance said. “Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?” 

Fox News contributor Joe Concha called it a “no-win situation” for the Trump administration.

“If the five-year-old was left in the cold without any parent or guardian to look after him, they would be accused of abandonment of a child or worse. And by detaining him, they get accused of essentially arresting an innocent kid. It’s dishonest, and the vice president was right to call out news outlets for pushing such an egregious lie,” Concha told Fox News Digital. 

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The Washington Post, Associated Press, Daily Beast, CNN, ABC, Newsweek and Axios didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman-Diamond and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.