(AP) – Dozens of immigrant families protested Saturday behind the fences of a detention center in Texas, where a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father were transferred this week after being detained in Minnesota.
Aerial photos taken by The Associated Press showed children and parents at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, dressed in jackets and sweaters, some of them holding signs that read “Freedom for the children.”
You could also hear the families outside chanting “Freedom!” or “Let us go,” said Eric Lee, an immigration attorney who was there to visit a client at the facility in Dilley.
The detention of Liam Conejo Ramos, 5, and his father, Adrián Alexander Conejo Arias, in Minnesota on Tuesday has become another flashpoint in the divisions over immigration under the Trump administration. The versions offered by government officials and the family’s attorney and neighbors present conflicting accounts about whether the parents were given a proper opportunity to leave the child with another person.
Earlier Saturday in Minneapolis, a federal immigration officer shot and killed a man, drawing hundreds of protesters into the cold streets and heightening tensions in a city already shaken by another fatal incident recorded weeks earlier.
María Alejandra Montoya Sánchez, 31, told the AP that she saw the father and son outside for a few minutes during the protest. She and her 9-year-old daughter have been detained in Dilley since October.
Marc Prokosch, the Cornejo Ramos family’s attorney, has not responded to messages seeking comment.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security did not offer comment on Saturday.
Montoya Sánchez said the protest was organized internally by families exhausted by the long detention and the conditions that advocates say have included meals with worms, constant illnesses and inadequate access to medical care. Lee said he later heard from his clients inside that the protest was related to the Liam Conejo Ramos case.
Lee, a Michigan-based attorney, said he was in the waiting room for a scheduled visit with a client when the guards entered and ordered everyone to leave.
“That children and their parents risk retaliation under these conditions to raise their voices is a testament to how brave they are as well as to how stark the conditions of this place are,” he said.
Hundreds of children have been detained at the facility beyond the court-imposed limit, according to a December report filed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a pending federal lawsuit.
