Vance Calls Out Fake News On ‘Ice Detains Boy’ Story

[https://www.flickr.com/people/126057486@N04, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Vice President JD Vance moved this week to puncture what the White House says is a distorted media narrative surrounding the detention of a five-year-old boy during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in a Minneapolis suburb—an episode that has been widely framed as evidence of reckless federal enforcement rather than, in Vance’s telling, a routine law-enforcement decision shaped by child-safety concerns.

The case centers on Liam Conejo Ramos, a preschooler who was briefly taken into custody alongside his father after ICE officers apprehended the adult outside the family’s Columbia Heights home, explained USA Today. Local school officials and advocacy groups quickly cast the incident in stark terms, alleging agents used the child to knock on the front door to check for other occupants—an account that ricocheted through national headlines and cable news within hours.

Federal authorities offered a markedly different version. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the father—identified as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias—was the target of the operation and attempted to flee on foot, leaving the child alone in cold weather. Agents, officials said, kept the boy with them to ensure his safety before transferring both to an ICE facility in Texas. The Department of Homeland Security has maintained that the child was not a target of enforcement and was never separated from his parent during the arrest process.

Those competing accounts have been treated unevenly, the administration argues, with sympathetic media coverage gravitating toward the most emotionally charged claims while discounting official explanations that complicate the preferred narrative. That imbalance, aides say, has fueled protests and deepened mistrust—particularly in Minnesota, where immigration enforcement has already been under intense scrutiny.

Speaking during a visit to Minneapolis following a closed-door meeting with federal agents, business leaders, and local officials, Vance rejected calls for ICE to stand down whenever children are present. “Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?” he asked. “If the argument is that you can’t arrest people who have violated the law because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement.”

The vice president’s remarks were a direct challenge to what administration officials describe as a pattern in national coverage: a presumption of misconduct by federal officers paired with a reluctance to acknowledge the practical constraints of enforcement—all at the behest of Democrats who simply want to attack ICE and demand open borders. Several media commentators have apologized for initially falling for the delusion.

Vance also dismissed speculation that the administration might invoke the Insurrection Act in response to unrest, saying the Trump administration sees no need for such measures.

Protests have persisted across the region for more than two weeks, intensified by a separate incident earlier this month in which an ICE agent fatally shot a U.S. citizen during an enforcement action—an event now intertwined in public discourse with the Columbia Heights detention despite involving different circumstances and legal questions.

[Read More: Newsom Fires Back At Bessent]

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