According to Levin’s article and many others, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was detained by ICE on Tuesday, Jan. 20, when he and his father returned home from school. Most would know what I speak of, given the outrageous situation. Although Liam and his father were eventually let free after a few weeks, there are many other innocent children who suffer from deportation, especially during Trump’s presidency. ICE is taking things too far, you and I both know it.
I personally, as a Hispanic sophomore in high school, have always been aware of this. Or, at least it’s a topic that’s been lurking at the back of my head. I never listened to those thoughts, tucking the worst of them away and saying, “It’ll never happen,” but it does every single day to other unfortunate people. “Papá always comes home from work, why should I worry?” I would think, until I find myself sitting in my talkative and chirpy dad’s truck, listening to him mumble about his close friend that got arrested by ICE. And for what crime? Simply for the brown color of his skin. Seeing the most trending topic on social media, “Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos detained by ICE just as he arrived home from school with his father,” and agents allegedly used the boy as bait to draw out other family members in the house, Levin reported.
The problem is, Liam was not the only child detained by ICE. According to Rosenburg et al., “Since the start of 2025, about 600 immigrant children have been placed in government shelters by ICE, according to government data… more than the sum of the last four years before.” Given that the article was written in November 2025, there are definitely more added to that total who continue to actively experience this hardship in 2026. We have to remember these are children, whose little hands are restrained by the unfamiliar men in the vests, their small pure eyes fearfully watching their parents beg the men not to take them away. “I want to go home,” they sniffle in their native tongue, but to the men, there is no home here for them.
After opening my eyes, I’ve noticed all these protests; some for the justice of Liam and others who in general express their detestment for ICE. I’ve noticed how violent things get when citizens decide to stand up for what’s right, from inhumanely getting tear gas thrown their way, even when they’re peacefully protesting, to suffering something as extreme as death, such as Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. Renee Nicole Good was trying to escape these agents as they surrounded her car, and she ended up dead for it. Alex Pretti was simply recording federal agents before they tackled him and shot him dead. The Department of Homeland Security justifies this under the excuse that the woman tried to run an agent over and that the man was armed. Alex Pretti may have been armed, but this weapon was for self-defense and hadn’t been drawn at the agents, giving them no reason to kill him. As seen in the video, Renee Nicole Good did not have her car turned toward the agents and was, in fact, only trying to escape. If ICE gets this violent with the rightful citizens of America who recognize their faults, they most certainly are not treating their victims well.
ICE is cold and unforgiving to the people they capture. The president promised to increase the captures of evil criminals with ICE, but these rules being set by him oppose this idea. According to Reichlin-Melnick, “President Trump’s executive order for the maximum use of detention has created a ‘no release’ system where increasingly few individuals are able to seek release on bond. By the end of November 2025, discretionary releases from detention fell by 87%.” This means that the people in these ICE detention centers have little to no chance of getting released, even the innocent who were wrongfully detained. This makes it imperative that they send immigrants back to their country, otherwise they risk staying locked up for months and, at worst, years until they finally lose hope and get deported.
Critics say that us “illegal aliens” deserve to be sent back to the country we came from and that we “rot the land.” They see us as the vermin that gnaw away at their job opportunities and groom ourselves with the money meant for them. In reality, my parents and many others do nothing but tirelessly work themselves every day doing the hard labor others hate in order to feed their children and buy them clothes; they build a life for us that they never got to have. Our parents came to the United States to live a better life. Here there are more opportunities than they would’ve ever been offered in their entire lives if they decided to stay in Mexico. My parents, where they’re from in Mexico, say the poor stay poor, the rich always stay rich. The sons of lawyers become lawyers, the daughters of doctors become doctors, and it is hard to be successful in Mexico when you grow up with nothing.
Everyone says that the government should abolish ICE, that they’re disturbing the peace, but after digging deep into these news sites and considering what all of them have to say, I believe that it’s important these agents get their act together and do their jobs right. They’ve shown nothing but unwanted violence and they’ve broken their own rules by doing so. It’s essential ICE shows the discipline and control that’s expected of a federal officer and avoid any unnecessary aggression. In order to avoid splitting families apart, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should only focus on capturing the criminals, not the innocent. That means pedophiles, rapists, murderers, terrorists and human traffickers; people who are actively getting involved in harmful crimes like this. With the freedom of speech I have, I’ll say President Donald Trump’s choice of demanding more deportations daily was unruly and foolish. Not only did it lead to great injustice in wrongfully deporting immigrants and mistreatment of the protestors of America, but it also encouraged mass hate and violence against these people. My people. This is America, the land of freedom and justice. We need to be doing better than this.