The Trump administration is disputing reporting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers used a 5-year-old as “bait” to lure his family members out of their home in Minnesota, claiming that the child was instead “abandoned” by his father who fled as officers tried to arrest him.
On Tuesday, ICE set out to apprehend the child’s father “when he fled on foot — abandoning his child,” the Department of Homeland Security said in an X post on Thursday. One officer stayed with the child as the others arrested his father, DHS said, describing the man as an “illegal alien from Ecuador.”
The department’s statement was a response to a description from Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, who said at a news conference Wednesday that ICE agents detained the boy as he came back from school with his father. Stenvik said another adult in the home “begged the agents to let him take care of the small child and was refused.”
She said an agent instead “took the child out of the still-running car, led him to the door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in in order to see if anyone else was home, essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”
The father and son were then driven away, Stenvik added.
Marc Prokosch, a lawyer representing the family, told reporters Wednesday he was not sure where they are being held. The family is going through an asylum application process, he said.
Stenvik and Prokosch did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Three other students in the district have been detained by ICE in January, Stenvik said, including two 17-year-olds and a 10-year-old.
The detentions further inflame tensions over the federal government’s immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota and the anti-ICE protests since the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
Minnesota officials have repeatedly called for ICE to leave the state, saying their presence is endangering residents and instilling fear in them.
The Trump administration has made little to no effort to deescalate tensions, even as ICE officers continue to be documented using force on protesters and bystanders. The White House accused Democrats in the state of allowing “professional agitators” to assault federal agents and prevent them from conducting immigration operations, without evidence. President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act against protesters in the state (although Vice President JD Vance said Thursday it wasn’t needed in Minnesota “right now”). And the Justice Department launched criminal investigations into top Democrats in the state.
The Trump administration has poured immense resources into Minnesota for its immigration crackdown. At least 3,000 federal law enforcement agents have been deployed to the state so far.
According to an email obtained by MS NOW, the Justice Department is asking military lawyers and paralegals to travel to Minneapolis to support the U.S. Attorney’s Office there, after six federal prosecutors resigned due to the fallout over Good’s killing. The assignment for the military attorneys would start in March.
In a speech in Minneapolis on Thursday, Vance blamed officials there for the chaos in the state, which he suggested was “the inevitable consequence of a state and local government that have decided that they’re not going to cooperate with immigration enforcement at all.”
Vance lamented the “viral stories of the past couple weeks” involving ICE agents’ conduct that he said, without providing examples, “turned out to be, at best, partially true.”
On Sunday, a protest at a church in St. Paul against Pastor David Easterwood — whom Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described in an October news conference as an acting field director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division in the city — drew the ire of the federal government as well.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Thursday that three people have been arrested in connection with the protest.
Criticism of the agency spread Thursday after reports that a medical examiner ruled this week that a Cuban immigrant’s death in federal custody in Texas was a homicide. DHS has insisted he died while struggling with security staff during a suicide attempt.
Laura Barrón-López contributed to this report.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.