JD Vance will visit Minneapolis as scrutiny mounts over the handling of immigration enforcement in Minnesota, including the detention of a 5-year-old boy by federal agents.
Vice President JD Vance is expected to deliver remarks in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Thursday as tensions remained high amid ongoing immigration raids and deepening fissures between state and federal officials.
Vance’s visit comes as outrage mounts over the highly visible immigration operations. The latest incident prompting scrutiny involves Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining four students, including a 5-year-old boy in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights.
School officials said Liam Conejo Ramos, a preschooler, and his father were detained in their driveway after school. When an adult known to the family offered to take Liam, ICE agents refused and instead led the boy to his front door and ordered him to knock “to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a 5-year-old as bait,” according to a news release from Columbia Heights Public Schools.
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that ICE conducted a “targeted operation” to detain Liam’s father and added “ICE did NOT target a child.” She accused the boy’s father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador, of fleeing from agents and “abandoning his child.”
The developments come more than two weeks after the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The shooting triggered protests and daily demonstrations in the Twin Cities marked by tear gas and heated clashes.
On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security announced the arrests of three people accused of participating in a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday. A federal magistrate judge on Thursday declined to sign a complaint charging journalist Don Lemon in connection with the protest, multiple news outlets, including The Associated Press and CBS News.
A third person has been arrested in connection with the protest at a St. Paul church that interrupted a service on Sunday, Jan. 18.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on X named the third person as William Kelly.
Earlier in the day, Bondi announced the arrests of Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a member of the St. Paul Public School board. Homeland Security Secretary said all three were being charged with conspiracy to deprive rights.
The arrests come after the DOJ said it was investigating the protest as a potential violation of the FACE Act, which protects access to religious worship under the First Amendment.
Roughly a dozen protesters greeted Vance outside the Royalston Square event venue in Minneapolis where he will deliver a speech today, with two holding signs reading “ICE out.”
Vance arrived at the Royalston and met with ICE agents before his speech. He also is holding a roundtable discussion. Three ICE SUVs are positioned around the podium where Vance will speak.
Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino said the Minneapolis Police Department has not been responding to calls from federal agents amid heated protests in the city.
“Minneapolis Police Department has been called on several situations that they have not responded to,” Bovino said at a news conference on Thursday. He described an incident in which two off-duty agents were confronted by protesters at a restaurant. Bovino said the agents called police but had to be assisted by a federal tactical team after 40 minutes without a police response.
The Minneapolis Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The surge of immigration agents into Minnesota has strained the relationship between federal and local law enforcement. Local police chiefs have criticized the tactics employed by federal agents and accused agents of racially profiling off-duty police officers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is facing intense scrutiny over its agents forcibly entering homes without a judge’s warrant.
An internal ICE memo authorized agents to use force to enter residences with only administrative warrants, which are signed by ICE officers and do not require a judge’s signature, multiple outlets reported, including the Associated Press and the Washington Post.
Marcos Charles, the executive associate director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, confirmed that agents enter homes with only administrative warrants at a news conference on Thursday.
“We don’t break into anybody’s homes,” Charles said. “We make entry either in a hot pursuit with a criminal arrest warrant or an administrative arrest warrant.”
At least four students under the age of 18 have been detained by immigration agents over the last two weeks in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, the school district said in a statement.
Liam Ramos, 5, was detained and with his father on Tuesday, Jan. 20, and taken to a detention facility in Texas, according to the district. On the same day, a 17-year-old was detained on his way to school after agents removed him from his car.
Last week, a 17-year-old student was taken into custody after “ICE agents pushed their way into an apartment,” according to Columbia Heights Public Schools.
And two weeks ago, a 10-year-old student and her mother were detained while on their way to class. “The father immediately came to the school to find that both his daughter and wife had been taken,” the district said in a statement. “By the end of the school day, they were already in a detention center in Texas, and they are still there.”
The school district said it is working with an immigration lawyer to get the students back.
“ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our children,” the district said. “The sense of safety in our community and around our schools is shaken and our hearts are shattered.”
Ahead of his visit to Minneapolis today, Vance touted the investigation into an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul church. He said he wants to see more arrests after the Department of Justice announced two of the protesters have been apprehended.
“I certainly want to see more arrests,” Vance said. “Because I’ve seen the videos and there are very clearly more people who have violated the law.”
The vice president predicted more prosecutions.
“They’re scaring little kids who are there to worship God on a Sunday morning,” Vance said. “Those people are going to be sent to prison.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said federal agents arrested two people involved in a protest that interrupted Sunday service at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Bondi identified those arrested as Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen but did not describe any alleged charges. “More to come,” Bondi said on X. “WE WILL PROTECT OUR HOUSES OF WORSHIP.”
A group of protestors entered Cities Church on Jan. 18, alleging that Pastor David Easterwood serves as the ICE St. Paul Field Office acting director. Videos show dozens of protesters changing “Renee Good,” and “don’t shoot,” as some verbally confronted churchgoers.
Anti-ICE protesters emerge during Minnesota church service
Anti-ICE protesters emerge during a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The DOJ launched an investigation into the protest as a potential violation of the FACE Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of force, threats or physical obstruction to block people from reproductive health care or access to religious worship under the First Amendment right to religious freedom.
As the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts continue to roil Minneapolis, Vance said he hopes his presence in the city Thursday will calm things down.
“Certainly one of my goals is to calm the tensions, to talk to people, to try to understand what we can do better,” Vance said during a speech in Toledo, Ohio, before flying to Minnesota.
At the same time, Vance blasted local officials for not cooperating with federal immigration authorities and blamed the lack of cooperation for “chaos” in the city. The vice president said he also wants to send a message to law enforcement “that we stand with them and we’re not going to abandon them.”
“We’re not going to do what the last administration did,” Vance continued. “Which is throw them under the bus to appease a bunch of left-wing radicals.”
A federal appeals court on Jan. 21 paused a lower court’s order that had ordered federal immigration agents in Minnesota not to use “intimidation tactics” against peaceful protesters.
The move by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals delivered a win to the Trump administration, which had vowed to appeal the lower court’s order that set up guardrails around the behavior of federal agents.
In the lower-court order, U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez said agents appeared to have engaged in “chilling conduct” and “intimidation tactics.” She noted actions such as the “drawing and pointing of weapons,” the “use of pepper spray and other non-lethal munitions” and “actual and threatened arrest and detainment of protesters and observers.”
Organizers in Minneapolis asked people to call out of work, skip school and refrain from buying anything as part of a protest against the ongoing immigration operations.
“Faith leaders, business owners, workers, and concerned Minnesotans have called for a statewide day of public mourning and pause through ‘No Work, No School and No Shopping’ and a massive, peaceful march in downtown Minneapolis that afternoon,” said a news release about the demonstration scheduled for Friday, Jan. 23.
Over the last two weeks, students at schools across Minnesota have held walkouts in protest of the immigration operation and Renee Good’s killing.