ICE'S FIVE YEAR OLD HUMAN BAIT STORY STRAINS CREDULITY

National Review

 

ICE’s 5-Year-Old ‘Human Bait’ Story Strains Credulity

By Noah Rothman

January 23, 2026 2:22 PM

 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s latest offense against decency, as described by New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, sure does sound unspeakably cruel:

 

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Andy Kim Verified account @AndyKimNJ

 

Just heartbreaking. Five year old Liam was detained by ICE with his father coming home from school in Minnesota. Reports say ICE used him as "bait". This is not the America I want my kids growing up in. The mindless cruelty and lawlessness must end.

cbsnews.com/minnesota/news

10:02 AM · Jan 22, 2026

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Kim was hardly alone in expressing outrage at the ICE agents who absconded with a child only to use him as “bait” to lure unsuspecting deportation targets into the open. That is the version of events that just about every mainstream media outlet is promulgating today.

 

“There is no justifying this,” read the title of USA Today columnist Rex Huppke’s column. “A family separated, a child traumatized: The cruelty of ICE knows no bounds.” ICE’s tactics “can only be described as pure evil,” Minnesota Senator Tina Smith averred. Donald Trump and company “don’t see these families as people, and that’s exactly how they’re treating them,” California Congressman Jimmy Gomez concluded. “How many children is ICE doing this to?” Virginia Representative James Walkinshaw asked. “We need an investigation, now.” The Democratic Party’s official social media organ agreed. “These monsters are sick,” read its denunciation of the law enforcement officers who used a child as “human bait.”

 

It’s no coincidence that the high-strung language about this incident that we’re seeing from Democratic activists and politicians mirrors the emotionally triggering verbiage deployed by so many mainstream news articles. Unsurprisingly, it’s the very language used by the activists who accused ICE of using the five-year-old as “bait” in the first place.

 

That word – “bait” – became ubiquitous after it was used by Minnesota’s Columbia Heights Public School District officials to describe the ICE operation in question.

 

“Why detain a five-year-old? You can’t tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal,” school superintendent Zena Stenvik emoted. According to school officials, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was detained after arriving home from preschool while his father was in the driveway. The father spontaneously disappeared. ICE agents seized the boy.

 

“Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let them take care of the small child, but was refused,” another unnamed school official told ABC News. Indeed, the Washington Post added, locals “begged the agents” to leave the child with them, but ICE impassively refused. “Instead, the agent took the child out of the still-running vehicle, led him to the door, and directed him to knock — asking to be let in to see if anyone else was home — essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”

 

That’s the school’s version of events. And, according to the institution’s activist administrators, it fits a broader pattern. “ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, and coming into our parking lots multiple times and taking our kids,” Stenvik said of ICE’s deliberate efforts to “induce trauma” in children.

 

This is the story that made the headlines. Despite its discrepancies (why would ICE use the child as “bait” but then fail to detain those who “begged” for his release?), it has become the accepted narrative. The official story, however, is quite different.

 

“ICE did NOT target a child,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security wrote. “The child was ABANDONED.” According to the federal government, ICE agents approached the boy’s father, who subsequently “fled on foot,” leaving his child behind. The father was later apprehended, but ICE officers stayed behind with Liam Ramos, per policy. The child and father were subsequently reunited in DHS custody, again in accordance with the agency’s protocol.

 

And if you read beyond the garment-rending appeals to emotion from the activists who apparently run Minnesota’s public schools, it seems that the media outlets that retailed their version of events know that the whole story is more ambiguous.

 

“DHS said that it was not targeting Liam and that ICE’s policy is to ask parents if they want to be removed with their children,” the Post conceded, “or ICE will place the children with a safe person designated by a parent.”

 

The simplest explanation for the behavior of federal law enforcement in this case is hardly nefarious. “For the child’s safety,” the DHS spokesperson added, “one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended” Ramos’s father.

 

In fact, it’s not even clear that the school officials who managed to set the record on this case have the slightest idea what they’re talking about. “The school officials also said they don’t know what happened,” CBS News admitted. “They want the public to get involved as this is happening to students all across the state of Minnesota.”

 

So these school officials weren’t dispassionately describing the events they witnessed. They were issuing a call to action, one that mainstream media outlets laundered into the national conversation to buttress Democratic talking points about ICE’s tactics.

 

There is some dispute over whether the Ramos family was a legitimate deportation target at all, but that’s a different matter from the charge that ICE treated a small boy inhumanely. But discrepancies like that are unlikely to agitate the public and foment unrest. And that was the goal here – not honest reporting but instigation on behalf of Democratic messaging shops, even if that enterprise wrecks national comity in the process.

 

The activists are right: This was a shameful episode. But the shame in this case doesn’t fall on ICE’s shoulders.