We Are All Fighting for Liam – and the Right-Wing Agitation Against Liam

A five-year-old child is being held in detention, hundreds of miles from his home, sick, exhausted, withdrawn. Liam Conejo Ramos, five years old, was taken into custody by ICE in early January in Minnesota together with his father and transferred to a family detention facility in Dilley, Texas. Since then, his condition has deteriorated. Not in an abstract way, not statistically, but concretely: fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, loss of appetite. A child becoming ill because he is imprisoned. The superintendent of his school district in Minnesota has spoken with Liam’s mother. Her concern is open, clear, not diplomatic. Liam is not doing well. He is sick. He has a fever. She is very, very worried about his well-being in that facility. It is a school speaking because a child is missing. Because a seat is empty. Because lessons do not simply continue when a student disappears.

Liam’s mother describes what her son is going through. The food makes him sick. He is in pain. He vomits. He no longer wants to eat. These are not political statements, they are everyday sentences from a mother who is not allowed to be with her child. Father and son remain detained. The mother outside, powerless, waiting for news. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, a Democrat, visited Liam and his father at the family detention center in Dilley. The boy was asleep, the father is desperate. The father said that the boy is no longer himself. That he sleeps a lot. That he is sad. Depressed. A five-year-old who does not understand why he is there. Who receives no explanation a child could comprehend.

Joaquin Castro: “I just visited Liam and his father. I also met countless other children and families who have done nothing wrong and should not be in detention. My full update on my visit to the Dilley detention center:”

Liam asks for his blue hat. For his Spiderman backpack. For the things he had with him when photos of his arrest went around the world. He asks for them because children cling to objects when everything else falls apart. These items are gone. Taken away. That too is part of detention. The responsible authorities claim the father entered the country illegally. The family’s attorney says something different: the family crossed at a legal port of entry. The authorities say the father fled. The attorney contradicts that. The authorities say the mother refused to take custody of the child. The authorities later themselves say the father wanted his son to stay with him. Contradictions, versions, file notes. Meanwhile, a child sits in a jail.

A lawyer who has been visiting children in such facilities for years says openly what happens there. In winter, almost all were sick. Children who were infected repeatedly. Panic attacks. Deep sadness. Depression after short periods of detention. Lack of medical care. Reports of spoiled food, of worms, of mold. Families threatened with separation. These are not exceptions. This is everyday reality. A sixteen-year-old told her he had fallen ill seven times. She says clearly: placing children in detention, whether with or without family, is inhumane. It is incompatible with what this country claims about itself. These children show signs of trauma. Not someday. Now.

Liam’s school district confirms that he is not the only one. At least four children from the same community were taken by ICE. The school says such a thing has no place. Not anywhere, not here. A community built around schools cannot accept that children disappear from classrooms. They demand an end to this terror and a return to a state in which children can learn and teachers can teach. Families must be reunited. This practice must end.

This is not an isolated case. This is a system. And Liam is a name we know because images exist. Because teachers speak. Because his mother does not remain silent. Many others remain nameless. We fight for Liam because a five-year-old child must not be sick in a prison. We all fight for Liam because no one can explain why this should be necessary. We fight for Liam because humanity is not negotiable. And because silence here means complicity.

And these are only sorted excerpts from the “extreme” and worst comments, much of which cannot be quoted here.

The comments from the right-wing camp, including from Germany and Austria, are downright repugnant. There it is seriously claimed that it is fake news that a five-year-old child is being held in ICE custody. At the same time, the family is attacked in the most despicable way, lied about, dehumanized, defamed. This is not an “opinion”, it is moral decay. Anyone who denies or justifies the imprisonment of a five-year-old has lost every standard. If this is supposed to be the political future under the name AfD, then one can only feel sorry for every single voter - not out of arrogance, but out of deep concern for what has become of decency, compassion, and responsibility.