Dozens of immigrant families protested behind the fences of a detention center in Texas on Saturday a 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy and his father were sent this week after being detained in Minnesota.
Aerial photos taken by The Associated Press showed children and parents at the South Texas Family Residential Center dressed in jackets and sweaters, some holding signs that read “Libertad para los niños,” or “Freedom for the Children.”
Families could also be heard outside shouting “Libertad!” chanted. or “Let’s go,” said Eric Lee, an immigration attorney who was there to visit a client at the facility in the city of Dilley.
“The message we want to convey is that they should treat us with dignity and according to the law. We are immigrants, with children, not criminals,” Maria Alejandra Montoya Sanchez, 31, told the AP in a telephone interview from the facility after the demonstration. She and her 9-year-old daughter have been held in Dilley since October.
The detention of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, in Minnesota on Tuesday has become a new lightning rod for the American division over immigration under the Trump administration. Versions offered by government officials, the family’s attorney and neighbors offer conflicting versions of whether the parents were given sufficient opportunity to leave the child with someone else.
Earlier Saturday in Minneapolis, a federal immigration official shot a man deadsending hundreds of protesters into the icy streets and flaring tensions in an already shaken city another fatal shooting weeks earlier.
Montoya Sanchez said she saw the father and son outside for a few minutes during the protest. Marc Prokosch, an attorney for the family, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not immediately comment Saturday.
Montoya Sanchez said the protest was organized internally by the families exhausted by the long detention and conditions that advocates say include worm-infested food, constant illness and inadequate medical access. Lee said he later learned from his clients that the demonstration was related to Liam Conejo Ramos’ case.
Lee, a Michigan attorney, said he was sitting in the waiting room for a scheduled client visit when security guards entered and ordered everyone to leave.
“That children and their parents risk retaliation for speaking out under these circumstances is a testament to how brave they are and how dire the conditions are in this place,” he said.
Hundreds of children have been held at the facility beyond court-ordered limits, according to a report filed in December by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an ongoing federal lawsuit.
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