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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Outrage is growing in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, after ICE agents detained a 5-year-old boy named Liam Ramos and his father, who’s an asylum seeker. Photos from the scene show a masked agent standing next to Liam, who was wearing a backpack and a blue winter hat with bunny ears. He had just returned from preschool. The father and son were then quickly sent to a detention facility in Texas.
On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance went to Minneapolis and defended ICE for targeting the boy’s father and detaining the preschooler.
VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: So, the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a 5-year-old child freeze to death?
AMY GOODMAN: Local officials in Columbia Heights condemned the detention of 5-year-old Liam. Rachel James serves on Columbia Heights City Council. She described efforts by neighbors to protect the boy.
RACHEL JAMES: I heard one neighbor say, “I live in this house. I’m part of this family. I can take him. Let him come to me.” I heard another neighbor on the other side say, “I have the forms. His mom signed the forms. Let me have him. I know him. I know him. … I kept saying, ‘Stop. Wait. He can go with us. He can go with the teachers.’” And then they took him over to the car, and he was just standing there. And then they quickly put him in the back seat and drove away.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, the lawyer for the Ramos family, Marc Prokosch, said Liam and his father had come to the U.S. in 2024 from Ecuador to seek asylum.
MARC PROKOSCH: Liam and his dad did enter the United States at a port of entry to seek asylum through the CBP One app at the Brownsville border crossing. So they did everything right when they came in. They used the app. They made an appointment. They came to the border and presented themselves to Customs and Border Patrol. They’ve shared all of their information with the government, and they were following the process. They were just trying to secure safety and persecution for their family from their home country. But ICE didn’t care about the fact that they had those pending claims, and then just arrested them.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as hundreds of businesses are expected to close today as part of an economic blackout to protest the surge of ICE agents in Minnesota. We’ll talk more about that in a minute.
But first, we’re getting an update on how the prominent Minneapolis civil rights attorney, activist and ordained minister Nekima Levy Armstrong and two others were arrested on federal charges for their role in peacefully protesting inside a St. Paul church where one of the pastors, David Easterwood, also leads the local ICE field office in the Twin Cities area.
JONATHAN PARNELL: Shame on you! Shame on you!
NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG: David Easterwood is a pastor here. He is also the director of the field office for ICE in St. Paul. So, someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents.
AMY GOODMAN: The activists involved in the protest now face charges under the FACE Act — that’s the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law written to protect abortion clinics. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Levy Armstrong’s arrest. Then the White House posted an AI-generated image to make it appear Levy Armstrong was crying after arrest. The Justice Department also attempted to bring charges against the journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who covered the church protest, but a federal magistrate judge rejected the request.
We go now to Minneapolis, where we’re joined by Jordan Kushner, civil rights and criminal defense attorney who is helping to represent Nekima.
We thank you so much for being with us, Jordan. If you can start off — you were with her when she was arrested, is that right? Can you talk about the AI-generated image? Can you talk about her wanting — saying that she would turn herself in, but they said no, because they said they were after her over the last few days, and what she was doing in that church?
JORDAN KUSHNER: That’s correct. Well, the arrest was a horrible ordeal. She was, and some other people in her group were, staying in a hotel. The group of FBI and Homeland Security agents busted into the hotel the night before her arrest, roughed people up. They were thrown out by the management. Later on, at 3:00 in the morning, someone left Nekima Levy Armstrong’s room. The police tackled — or, the agents tackled her violently and took her to a detention facility, before they realized that she wasn’t Nekima Levy Armstrong. So she was obviously terrified about turning herself in.
A legal team, including myself, went to the hotel that morning. We contacted — reached out to agents to try to arrange for her to turn herself in voluntarily at the federal courthouse, which was only about six blocks away. They put the U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, a Trump appointee, Dan Rosen, on the — he called me himself. I made my request to him. He said it was very reasonable, and he was just going to call me back in a few minutes with the specific logistics. Then he calls back and says, “Oh, we’re not going to let her turn herself in. We need to arrest her at the hotel. So she needs to voluntarily leave the hotel room and turn herself in.” So, after he talked to his bosses in D.C., he had completely reneged on his commitment.
They then sent agents up there to the hotel room to arrest her. One of the agents was filming the arrest. As they put her in handcuffs, he was filming it on his cellphone. I’ve never seen anything like that. They can have their body cameras. This was completely unprofessional. He said he was just doing it because of instructions, and he promised it wasn’t going to go on Twitter. Nevertheless, it went on Twitter. It went on the Department of Justice’s Twitter. So, this was their trophy.
And then, as you said, the White House subsequently altered the video to make it look like she was crying. I observed the whole arrest. She was dignified, rational, calm and reasonable the whole time. It just shows the complete political motivation of the government in making this a circus. This has nothing to do with enforcing the law. It has nothing to do with protecting on anyone’s religious rights. It’s all about — it’s about, frankly, just about fascism. And in a fascist — and fascism means part of that is that the government makes their own narrative. They invent reality. And they’re literally doing that with an AI video. And so, what this is about —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And —
JORDAN KUSHNER: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jordan, I wanted to ask you if you could talk about the charge that they — that she’s been arrested on, and basically a statute that has its roots in the Reconstruction era to prosecute members of the KKK for terrorizing Black Americans.
JORDAN KUSHNER: Yeah, she’s charged with conspiracy to violate civil rights — or, excuse me, conspiracy to violate constitutional rights of other people. Namely, the claim is that by protesters going into a church to raise objections to how this church conducted its business, with Nekima Levy Armstrong being a reverend herself, that that somehow deprived the people in the church of their right to freedom of worship. You know, it is a farce. It was passed to really protect people’s constitutional rights. That’s what she’s charged with.
The government also sought to charge her with another offense under the FACE Act, which involved, you know, obstruction of someone else’s exercise of their religious practices. The magistrate refused to sign on to that charge, so we’re left with the conspiracy to violate constitutional rights. This was an exercise of free speech. They were exercising their own constitutional rights. It’s unheard of for someone, people to be charged with a criminal offense for free speech protests like that. That’s a —
AMY GOODMAN: Jordan?
JORDAN KUSHNER: — legal, peaceful protest. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Jordan, I was just watching Right Reverend Craig Loya, who’s the 10th bishop of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota. He talked about what’s happening, the immigration crackdown, as a campaign of “reckless cruelty.” He refused to condemn what Nekima had done, said that it’s time — and we’ve seen this with the Catholic bishops, as well — saying it’s time for us to, he said, “put our bodies on the line.” I want to end just by saying we wanted to have Nekima on this morning, but she’s still not out of jail? We have 10 seconds.
JORDAN KUSHNER: Yeah, the magistrate ordered her release. The government did a maneuver where they appealed. So it’s being reviewed by a judge and waiting for a judge’s decision about whether she’s going to be released. So, the government used more manipulative tactics to keep her in jail, when there was no basis whatsoever. No one is detained on a case like this.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much for being with us. Others arrested included Chauntyll Louisa Allen, a St. Paul school board member, and activist William Kelly. Jordan Kushner, thanks so much for being with us, civil rights and criminal defense attorney representing Nekima Levy Armstrong, who’s still in jail after being arrested last Sunday — after being arrested yesterday for peacefully protesting a St. Paul church Sunday where a top ICE official serves as a pastor.
