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DOJ filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday, signaling that it will try to undo a federal judge’s order that requires the release of 5-year-old Liam Ramos, whose photo put a human face on Trump’s mass deportation policy and busted open the myth that it was about getting violent criminals off the streets of Minneapolis. Liam’s Dad, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum applicant, was detained and then released with his son.
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Although the two were seized in Minneapolis, The Justice Department filed its notice of appeal in federal court in Texas, because the two were held in the Dilley detention facility in there. The appeal goes to the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The conditions in Dilley are shamefully inhumane with food contaminated by bugs, failure to provide essential medical care, and unsanitary conditions being well-documented.
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The federal judge who ordered the father and son released after their lawyers filed a habeas petition noted the complexities of the situation in his brief order. He noted the pair might still be forced to return to their country in origin because of our “arcane” immigration system, but that if it happened on his watch, they would at least receive due process. “That result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place,” Judge Fred Biery wrote, before referencing Ben Franklin’s comment, “a republic, if you can keep it.”
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The federal government is using its resources to try and send 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos back to detention in a facility it can’t be bothered to make safe. No one in this administration would spend five minutes or eat a single meal in those conditions, yet today, Trump’s
There is a cost to tying up investigative and prosecutorial resources. ProPublica got the data: “In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases.” You can make time for cases like Liam Ramos’ when you abandon public corruption prosecutions. Apparently, this DOJ did.
It’s hard to report on people who are being held in custody. The journalists who put a human face on this story and elected officials like Joaquin Castro who insisted on doing their jobs did the work of democracy here. Even Alabama Senator Katie Britt, albeit fleetingly, saw the people behind the ugly label “illegal immigrants” when America got to see Liam in a hat and backpack they could easily envision their own children in. We need to keep telling immigrants’ stories; putting real faces onto people who could easily remain faceless. They are all individual stories. These are people with futures ahead of them. Not everyone may be entitled to remain in this country, but that doesn’t mean they should be warehoused in disease-ridden facilities with rotten food.
As for Liam and his Dad, they came to this country seeking asylum. Asylum is a fundamental human right that affords people fleeing persecution or danger the right to request protection and legal residence in another country. It’s provided for by both international law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) and U.S. laws. Protecting their rights seems essential to ensuring we keep our own. Like so many other things, it’s up to the courts.
We’re in this together,
Joyce