Judge Biery Grants Habeas Petition and Orders Release of Liam Conejo Ramos and His Father From Dilley Detention

On the 20th of January 2026, Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old pre-kindergarten student from Ecuador with a pending asylum claim, was detained by ICE in Minnesota. On the 31st of January 2026 (order date), U.S. District Judge Fred Biery of the Western District of Texas granted a habeas petition filed for Liam and his father and ordered both released from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.

What Amnesty reports (secondary)

Amnesty International’s report We Had Whistles, They Had Guns records that on the 20th of January 2026 Liam was detained by ICE “on his way home from school,” that agents forced him to knock on the door of his home and then detained his father, and that both were taken to Dilley and held until, in Amnesty’s words, “a District Court judge ordered their release.” Amnesty cites the court order below as its source for the release.

The court record (primary)

The habeas petition was captioned Conejo Arias v. Noem in the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division, and named the DHS Secretary, the Attorney General, the acting ICE director, the acting EOIR director and the Dilley warden as respondents.

The Opinion and Order dated the 31st of January 2026 grants the writ. The court wrote that the case began in “the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” and held that “Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.” Those are the court’s words, not Amnesty’s.

The Judgment of the same date directs release “under appropriate conditions of release no more restrictive than those in place prior to the detention,” no later than Tuesday, 3 February 2026, and prohibits any removal or transfer of the petitioners under this detention. The judgment closed the case.

The competing accounts of 20 January

School officials and DHS gave different accounts of the arrest. Columbia Heights Public Schools superintendent Zena Stenvik said an agent “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” (CNN). DHS said Liam’s father fled as agents tried to detain him, leaving the child alone, and that the mother “REFUSED to take custody of her own child” (CNN, quoting DHS posts). The court’s Opinion and Order does not make findings on this dispute.

Coverage check: no prior cascade-timeline entry names this case. Related: 2026-01-28–judge-schiltz-ice-violated-96-court-orders-minnesota.