What Trump officials and immigration lawyers say about ICE detaining a 5-year-old

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The detention of a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy with his father outside their home in Minnesota has become the latest lightning rod for America’s divisions on immigration under the Trump administration. Versions offered by government officials and the family’s attorney and neighbors offer contradictory versions of whether the parents were given adequate opportunity to leave the child with someone else.

Neighbors and school officials say that federal immigration officers used the preschooler as “bait” by telling him to knock on the door to his house so that his mother would answer.

The Department of Homeland Security calls that description of events an “abject lie.” It says the father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled on foot and left the boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, in a running vehicle in their driveway.

The dueling narratives come just two weeks after the deadly shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer that witnesses also viewed as a blatant abuse of power — and that the government defended as a legitimate act of self-defense.

The father and son are now at family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, near San Antonio.

Federal o...