'Bring 5-Year-Old Liam Home': GoFundMe Tops $200K For MN Child Detained By ICE

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — A GoFundMe campaign launched to help bring home a 5-year-old Minnesota boy after being detained by ICE has surged past $200,000 in donations in just days, drawing thousands of contributions from across the country and beyond.

The fundraiser, titled "Help Bring 5-Year-Old Liam Home," is aimed at covering legal costs and basic needs after the child and his father were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota and quickly transferred to a detention facility in Texas.

Organizers say the money is being used to fund attorney fees tied to a habeas corpus bond request, as well as communication and living expenses while the family navigates the legal process.

The campaign has drawn widespread attention and emotional responses, with donors citing concern for the child’s safety and well-being and calling for his return home to Minnesota.

Federal agents took the child from a running car in the family's driveway Tuesday afternoon, Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik told reporters Wednesday.

The officers told him to knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait," she said.

The father told the child's mother, who was inside the home and has not been named, not to open the door, Stenvik told reporters Thursday.

School officials said the agents wouldn’t leave Liam with another adult who lives at the home or an official from the school district.

Feds dispute local school officials' version of events

But on Thursday, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an online post that the father asked for the child to stay with him and that they are together at an immigration lockup in Dilley, Texas.

The family, who came to the U.S. in 2024, has an active asylum case and had not been ordered to leave the country, according to both Stenvik and the family's lawyer.

"Why detain a 5-year-old?" she asked. "You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal."

McLaughlin said in a statement Wednesday that "ICE did NOT target a child."

She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement was arresting the child’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, who McLaughlin said is from Ecuador and in the U.S. illegally. He fled on foot, “abandoning his child,” she said.

"For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias," McLaughlin said, adding that parents are given the choice to be removed with their children or have them placed with a person of their choosing.

Others offered to take the child

Stenvik suggested that the father did not run. She said another adult who lives at the home was outside when the father and son were taken, but agents wouldn't leave Liam with that person.

Mary Granlund, school board chair for Columbia Heights Public Schools, told reporters Thursday that she had told agents she would take the child before they left with him.

Rachel James, a Columbia Heights city council member who lives nearby the family, said she saw another neighbor from across the street tell the agents they had papers authorizing them to take care of Liam on behalf of the parents. The agents ignored them, James said.

The family's lawyer, Marc Prokosch, said Thursday that he assumes Liam and his father are in a family holding cell but that they have not been able to have "direct contact" with them.

“We’re looking at our legal options to see if we can free them either through some legal mechanisms or through moral pressure," he said at a news conference.

Vice President JD Vance met with Minneapolis leaders Thursday and said he heard the “terrible story” but later learned the boy was only detained, not arrested.

“Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?” said Vance, noting that he's the parent of a 5-year-old.

Vance wasn’t asked about why immigration officers allegedly wouldn’t leave the boy with the other adult who lives at the home and offered to take him.

Attorneys visiting the Dilley detention facility say conditions for children are “worse than ever,” with reports that nearly every child they encountered was sick, malnourished, or seriously ill after months in custody.

Children’s Rights chief legal counsel Leecia Welch said the number of detained children has skyrocketed, with many held for more than 100 days, despite the administration acknowledging hundreds of prolonged detentions.

At the same time, fear tied to ICE activity has rippled through schools across Minnesota, where officials say agents have followed buses and entered school areas, contributing to sharp drops in attendance and what educators describe as widespread trauma among students.

Reporting from the Associated Press was used in this story.