Why a Scared 5-Year-Old Boy Shook Our National Conscience

What the image of Liam Ramos, grabbed in Minnesota and thrown in detention in Texas, means for our democracy.

Liam Ramos (Photos courtesy Columbia Heights Public Schools)

IT IS ONE OF THE INDELIBLE IMAGES OF MINNEAPOLIS: Liam Ramos, age 5, in his oversized bright blue bunny hat, being loaded onto a bus bound for a Texas detention facility 1,200 miles away. Many parents I know shared the image, picturing their own child, aghast that our government would do this to a little kid. I was shocked, too, when I first saw the image, tears welling up in my eyes. With his little Spider-Man backpack and the fuzzy pom-pom balls dangling from his hat, Liam looks so cute and so forlorn. His middle name is even Conejo, which means rabbit. It can all be too much.

On the day he was photographed, January 20, Liam had been used by faceless, nameless DHS agents to capture his father at his preschool pickup; he was also being used as bait to see if the agents could ambush other members of the family. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.), gave a blistering speech on the House floor last week, castigating Republicans for their silence on Liam’s kidnapping, reading a devastating quote from Liam’s teacher Ella Sullivan: “He comes into class every day, and he just brightens the room. His friends haven’t asked about him yet, but I know that they’ll catch on.” What the kids will catch on to, Menendez said, is that Liam—and not violent criminals—is the real face of the people being taken from our communities.

“My daughter is 5 and I live in Jersey City,” Menendez told me. He said Liam reminded him of his daughter’s classmates, or his neighbors walking around town holding their children’s hands. Liam’s innocence moves him, he said, and it horrifies him to think about what Liam’s “life is going to be like after this awful experience and the fact that our government—our government—is responsible for that.”

The Washington Post’s art and architecture critic, Philip Kennicott, writing about the photo of Liam, asked if it had “the power to shock Americans into demanding an end to this cruelty?” The picture reminds us, Kennicott argues, that “childhood isn’t just about age”:

It is a condition of existence created, sustained and protected by adults. The hat tells us not only that there is someone close to him who loves and cares for him, but also that all of us, as adults, owe to children the right to live free from the suffering and meanness that so often define the world of adulthood. We must certainly never co-opt them into our guile or cruelty. . . . A universal moral image works because at some level we share a universal moral conscience. There are certain things that, when seen, compel us to action in a way that transcends all other concerns. . . . A child in distress demands action now. The world stops for a moment, and decent people do what is absolutely, immediately necessary.

Kennicott goes on to argue that it is the weaponizing of compassion and decency that is so deeply unsettling about the image. “ICE didn’t place a box of candy or a $100 bill on the front stoop of the house, hoping to tempt people out,” he said. “They used a child to appeal to the most innate and essentially human impulse to show care, concern and protect—to capture those who care for him. They weaponized decency, the last incorruptible defense we have against absolute misery and evil.”

Misery in Texas

TO MAKE THE STORY EVEN MORE DISTURBING: Liam isn’t the only child or even the only 5-year-old jailed where he is now. Lawyer Eric Lee, who saw detainees with ashen faces when he went inside the Dilley, Texas detention center last week, told me his clients are dealing with bugs and dirt in their food, putrid water mixed with baby formula, and denial of medical care. Two clients he visited last week, a boy and a girl who are twins, turned 5 in the detention center. He explained that the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement, which calls for kids to be treated humanely and for their release to be prioritized, says they can only be in detention for twenty days. The twin 5-year-olds, and their family members who are 9, 16, and 18, have been there for an appalling eight months, Lee said.

As Lee waited, guards unceremoniously kicked him out, and that’s when he heard the protests from what sounded like hundreds of kids and parents, who risked likely retribution to yell “Libertad para los niños” and “Let us go!”

“Those are children’s voices. So to every American who is watching, and watching those demonstrations, watching what this administration is doing—the effective attempt to establish a dictatorship in this country—if the kids who are in detention are risking their lives then what are you doing to stand up and fight for democracy today?” Lee asked on MS Now.

In our interview he noted that a mother inside the detention center bravely spoke to the Associated Press last week, saying “The message we want to send is for them to treat us with dignity and according to the law. We’re immigrants, with children, not criminals.” She could be punished and separated from her own children. The stakes are unbearably high.

“Liam has ignited something, but Liam is one of so many,” Lidia Terrazas, the Univision local reporter who covers the Dilley detention center, told me, noting that one-third of the detainees in the facility are children.

Texas state representative Linda Garcia took part in actions on Wednesday to bring attention to what is happening to children at Dilley. She was joined by representatives from unions like the AFL-CIO, faith leaders, and advocacy groups like Mi Familia Vota. Later, she met with Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) for a community rally on the west side of San Antonio, a city that is two-thirds Latino.

“I am a mother, I have a 9-year-old son, this completely paralyzed me, it stopped me dead in my tracks,” she told me of Liam’s kidnapping, stressing the need for solidarity now.

Castro, who had long been planning to visit Dilley, gave seven days’ notice that he was going to visit in the days before Liam was taken. When he gave subsequent forty-eight-hour notice so he could meet with Liam while there, Castro was initially given the runaround because ICE said the detainee has to sign the form.

“He’s a fucking 5-year-old kid and we’re going back and forth with them. . . . This is the bullshit this system is all about,” Castro told me.

Before the rally, Castro did manage to go to the facility and meet with Liam and his father. Because Liam is depressed and sleeping a lot, the congressman did not get to speak to the boy, but he spoke to his father, who is trying to remain strong. Liam’s mother told MPR News that he is sick “because the food they receive is not of good quality” and “he has stomach pain, he’s vomiting, he has a fever and he no longer wants to eat.”

Castro let Liam’s dad know his classmates at school miss him and they left his space and his desk ready for him to return. He learned that Liam has asked about his classmates and wants to get back to his school and his community.

Liam also asked where his bookbag and his bunny hat are.

Castro made the point that the 1,100 mothers and fathers in Dilley are not criminals—because real criminals get expressly deported and their kids get put in facilities run by Health and Human Services. His message at the detention center was that the country is against what’s happening, wants Liam released, and no child who is 5 years old should be in detention.

Or no children at all: While there, Castro learned there is a two-month-old baby being held at Dilley. There was also a little girl who kept hugging his leg and asking him to help them.

I asked Castro how the visit affected him.

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said, sounding spent. “It makes you question humanity when you hear that a two-month-old has been there several days—and again there isn’t a single criminal in that building. A lot of people came to claim asylum and did it the right way, using the CBP One app. There was someone who lived in Florida thirteen years. Another [was] the wife of a U.S. citizen.”

Castro said that he and his staff will follow up on the cases of the dozens of detainees he met with and give notice of a return trip to Dilley to check on Liam. Next time, though, he says he plans to bring more congressional Democratic colleagues with him.