Texas Judge Orders Five-Year-Old Minnesota Boy, Father Released in Bizarre Order

On Saturday, Judge Samuel Frederick “Fred” Biery, Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas (S.D. Texas) issued an opinion ordering ICE to release two Ecuadoran nationals, a five-year-old boy identified as “L.C.R.” and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, both of whom were arrested by the agency in Minnesota and transported to its South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (“Dilley”). It’s a bizarre order, one that calls the warrant provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) — and the act itself — into question.

“Bait” or “Abandoned”?

The child’s real name is “Liam Conejo Ramos”, and his encounter by ICE officers on January 20 quickly became yet another flashpoint in the firestorm raging over immigration enforcement in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

The details of how he came to be in the agency’s custody are disputed, but it appears the father had picked the child up from preschool and was in the family’s driveway when the pair were approached by immigration officers.

Officials from Liam Conejo Ramos’s school claim that:

Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let them take care of the small child, but was 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 narrative was called into question in a January 22 DHS tweet, however:

Marcos Charles, the ICE chief in Minnesota, explained further:

He [Adrian Conejo Arias] and his child were in a vehicle. Arias fled from law enforcement on foot, abandoning his child in the middle of winter in a vehicle. One of our officers stayed behind with that child, while other officers apprehended his father. ... After conducting the arrest, my officers, they cared for him, took him to get something to eat from a drive through restaurant, and spent hours ensuring he was taken care of, again my officers did that, not his father. ... My officers did everything they could to reunite him with his family. Tragically, when we approached the door of his residence, the people inside refused to take him in and open the door. ... My officers do the right thing, no matter how difficult or how long it takes throughout the day.

Then there’s the recounting of the incidents surrounding arrest by Erika Ramos, Liam Conejo Ramos’s mother.

As NBC News reported on January 30, Ramos claimed she:

“witnessed the scene from the window and couldn’t do anything. Adrián begged me repeatedly not to go outside because he was afraid they would arrest me too.”

Ramos said the immigration officers noticed her, took Liam out of their car and brought him to the front door so she would open it.

They knocked and knocked, and my son Liam kept saying, ‘Mommy, open the door.’ I was terrified,’ [Ramos] said while sobbing.”

She said she didn’t open the door out of fear she would be arrested and her other child would be left alone.

Ramos was plainly there, but how, exactly, school officials came to understand the circumstances of that encounter when the child was not on school property is unclear. Regardless, those conflicting narratives have driven much of what has happened since.

Dilley

For various reasons, the only state in which ICE detains alien “families” (adult migrants with their children) is Texas, and there are two such facilities there: (1) the STFDC in Dilley, and (2) the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center (“Karnes”).

When I was an immigration judge at the York (Pa.) Immigration Court between 2006 and 2015, ICE had a third family detention facility in Berks County, Pa., which I had jurisdiction over, but it was shut down in the face of local pressure in January 2023, well after the Biden administration stopped family detention in December 2021.

Apparently, local activists thought shuttering Berks would force the federal government to cease family detention altogether; given that the INA mandates that many alien families be detained, however, that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, it was largely “NIMBYism”.

Needless to say, I was familiar with Berks, but also had the opportunity to observe operations at Dilley as well, during a tour of the STFDC in January 2020. Nobody wants to detain alien families, but if it must be done, Dilley provides the amenities (classrooms, recreation) and necessities (food, medical, and laundry facilities) required to make it as comfortable as possible.

Enter Judge Biery

On January 24, L.C.R. and his father, through counsel, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus, seeking release from the Dilley facility. That case was assigned to Judge Biery, and seven days later, as noted, he ordered the pair to be released no later than February 3.

Don’t look to the court’s opinion for any resolution of the dueling claims surrounding the arrest of the pair, or even any explanation of why the judge was ordering them released: It’s heavy on personal opinion, but aside from a generalized description of the nature of “habeas” (including reference to the Magna Carta), a quote from the Fourth Amendment, allusion to the New Testament, and direct quotes from the Declaration of Independence, it lacks any legal analysis, and doesn’t offer much factual reasoning, either.

Consider the first sentence in the second paragraph: “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented [sic] government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

Putting aside the fact that enforcement decisions are clearly within the purview of the “political” branches, Judge Biery fails to cite any support for his conclusion that DHS has implemented “daily deportation quotas”, let alone “ill-conceived” and “incompetently implemented” ones.

“The Fox Guarding the Henhouse”

Unsupported factual determinations in a judicial opinion are bad enough, but Judge Biery’s hot take on the validity of ICE warrants is particularly problematic: “Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.”

As I have explained in the past, Congress expressly authorized ICE to issue and arrest aliens based upon administrative warrants in section 236(a) of the INA, and up until this opinion, reviewing courts have held that such warrants pass constitutional muster.

Moreover, as I have also noted elsewhere, it’s impossible for ICE to obtain a “judicial warrant” from “an independent judicial officer” of the sort Judge Biery claims “the Constitution” requires to empower immigration officers to arrest removable aliens on civil immigration grounds.

Consequently, if Judge Biery’s “fox guarding the henhouse” finding were affirmed, the only remaining option would be for ICE officers to take custody of removable aliens using their “warrantless” arrest authority in section 287(a) of the INA.

Logically, warrantless administrative arrests are more constitutionally suspect than arrests on warrant — just one more issue in a particularly problematic opinion.

In that vein, Judge Biery never cites, let alone distinguishes, the Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion in INS v. Lopez-Mendoza, where the justices rejected the claim that the “exclusionary rule” — crafted by the courts to protect against potential Fourth Amendment violations — doesn’t apply in deportation cases.

As the majority held there:

The constable's blunder may allow the criminal to go free, but we have never suggested that it allows the criminal to continue in the commission of an ongoing crime. When the crime in question involves unlawful presence in this country, the criminal may go free, but he should not go free within our borders.

The Wisdom of Thomas Jefferson

Then there’s the following purely gratuitous swipe:

Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

1. "He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People."
2. "He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”
3. "For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us."
4. "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures."

"We the people" are hearing echos [sic] of that history.

Underlying that finding is an apparent agglomeration of assumptions and strawmen, but worse, it reads like a transcript from “The View” — not a judicial opinion.

That said, to the extent the S.D. Texas is relying on Jeffersonian quotes, I have many more he should consider, such as the following from (the 64-year-old) then-president to John Norvell, in June 1807:

[T]he man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

Much of what Judge Biery refers to appears to be gleaned from questionable press reports on disputed political issues of the sort Jefferson complained about 218-plus years ago. Again, it would help if he referenced the factual bases for his conclusions.

Or maybe Judge Biery could consider this, from 81-year-old Jefferson to his namesake, Thomas Jefferson Smith, in February 1825: “When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”

Anger is never a good look, especially not when it comes to legal writing. The opinion is less than three full pages, and you can read it for yourself to assess the court’s state of mind.

Of course, few jurists would have the temerity to quote the author of the Declaration’s (dismal) views on the federal judiciary, but here’s a sample from a letter the (77-year-old) Jefferson sent to the merchant and diplomat, William Charles Jarvis, in September 1820:

Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privileges of their corps. Their maxim is ‘boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [“good judges have ample jurisdiction”],’ and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective controul.

Few have greater admiration for the self-described “Father of the University of Virginia” (my alma mater), but I’m inclined to take a more charitable approach to both the media and the courts than Jefferson did — most of the time.

I’m especially more predisposed than many across the political spectrum to give federal judges the benefit of the doubt in their opinions. But such latitude is not limitless, particularly when the jurist in question appears to be placing a ham-fisted thumb on the legal scale.

You Be the Judge

I’ve repeatedly read Judge Biery’s opinion and still don’t know what to make of it aside from the fact that he doesn’t like DHS’s current immigration enforcement policies nor does he want either Liam Conejo Ramos or his father to remain in ICE custody.

The child plainly has a mother who can care for him (even if she did not want to retrieve him at the family’s front door), so perhaps the S.D. Texas should have released the child to her custody. But since Judge Biery is fond of Biblical quotes, perhaps he should check out Psalm 27:10.

Releasing Liam Conejo Ramos’s father as well, however, seems unduly punitive — especially if, as DHS contends, he fled his arrest and left his child behind, and thus is a flight risk.

Judges have the same flaws as the rest of us, but we expect them to be detached and rule clearly, especially when public passions are running hot. Judge Biery’s opinion releasing a five-year old detained by ICE with his father in Minnesota is just three pages long, and because it largely lacks legal analysis is readily accessible to the layman. Read it and judge for yourself whether the court hit the mark.