5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, together with his father, was detained by ICE in Minnesota in January, sparking worldwide outrage. Now, his parents have shared a heartbreaking update on their son, explaining how the incident has deeply affected the little boy.

A young boy’s life changed forever after one moment, and now his parents are sharing a heartbreaking update. In January, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was walking home from preschool in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, with his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias.

However, they never got home. The father-son duo was detained by ICE agents.

Liam and his dad were taken away and spent almost two weeks in a detention center in Texas. It sparked global outrage, and in the end, a judge ordered their release.

While Liam is now back home, the incident has had a great impact on him. In a new interview with CBS, translated from Spanish to English, his parents, Erika and Adrian, now say the experience has deeply affected their son.

Parents of 5-year-old detained by ICE share heartbreaking update

They say their son now acts “very different” since he was taken into custody on January 20. His father explained how their son now regularly sees a psychiatrist.

“As parents, it worries us a lot that he’s no longer as he was before, and we’re worried this could last a long time,” Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias said. “It does worry us that this will not heal quickly.”

“My boy is very different,” his mother, Erika Ramos, added, saying that Liam lives in constant fear. “He sees police officers, and he says, ‘It’s ICE, Mommy,’” she added.

For a child so young, those words are hard to hear — and even harder to live with.

The picture of Liam being detained, wearing a buny hat and carrying a backpack, sparked global outrage. After coming home, mother Erika explained that he had been acting up and behaving badly. He used to be a happy kid in school, but now, he no longer wants to attend certain classes or play with other children.

The judge who ordered their release said at the time that their detention had its “genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

But while Liam and his father were released, the federal government has continued efforts to deport the family. Per CBS, most recently, their asylum case has ended, challenging the federal court decision that permitted Liam and his father to be released from ICE detention.

Deny false rumors about trying to evade arrest

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said Liam’s family was ordered to be deported by an immigration judge after receiving “full due process.” The department has continued to urge parents like Liam’s to self-deport alongside their kids.

At the time of their deportation, ICE claimed that Liam’s father tried to evade arrest and abandoned his son in the process. However, in the CBS interview, Conejo Arias rejected the accusation.

“I think it was an injustice that they did that to us, when in reality we were doing everything right,” Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias said.

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