Video shows Minnesota dad and boy were flown on Delta to ICE detention in Texas
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Airport security video shows another way federal agents take immigrants to detention centers; In some cases, they use commercial flights with escorts dressed as other passengers.
In the video obtained through a public records request, the 5-year-old boy, who became the face of immigration crackdown in Minneapolis when he was detained while wearing a bunny hat, is seen flying to Texas with his father on a Delta Air Lines plane. detained.
Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, Liam Conejo Ramos, appeared calm in these recordings as they were escorted to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by a plainclothes man and two women. Since father and son did not appear to be in custody, their journey to San Antonio likely went unnoticed by other passengers.
The Trump administration, like its predecessors, mostly uses ICE Air Operations charter flights during arrests Hundreds of thousands of people are about to be deported. Human rights monitors are trying to keep track Detainees are loaded onto planes in shackles in parts of airports that are not easily visible to the public.
They say the video of Liam and his father reveals another route for them that was harder to document, even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were clearly seen in the same airport terminals wearing tactical, military-style gear. deployed to support security checkpoints.
What happened in this situation?
The father and his son, who requested asylum in Ecuador, were detained by ICE officers in Minnesota on January 20 and taken to Texas. They were released on a date judge’s orders and returned to Minnesota but then an immigration judge rejected their asylum request. The family’s lawyer said they would appeal.
The video revealing commercial airline travel was first obtained by aviation enthusiast and activist Nick Benson of MN 50501, a grassroots group involved in anti-ICE and No Kings protests. Benson said he didn’t see any children while monitoring ICE charter flights, so he suspected ICE was flying them commercially. He located the time and day the father and son flew from Minneapolis, filed a public records request for security video, and there they were.
The Associated Press obtained the same video through a similar request to the MSP Airport Police Department. Liam’s father is seen carrying the boy’s Spider-Man backpack as he shows his boarding passes to a female airline attendant. A man and another woman follow them into the jetway.
Delta declined to comment on the video. But the airline said most government travel was booked through third-party organizations and was not given advance notice of who was flying or why. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
What is ICE Air?
ICE Air Operations transferring and deporting people It mostly uses chartered flights through airline broker CSI Aviation, which subcontracts with smaller airlines such as GlobalX, Eastern Air Express, Bighorn Airways, Key Lime Air and Avelo Airlines.
According to Human Rights First, which documented 1,630 immigration enforcement flights in February alone, ICE Air continues to rapidly expand both domestic transfer and deportation flights; this number increased from 39 in January to an average of 42 per day. 183 of these flights were deportation flights and 1,170 were domestic transfer flights.
ICE also uses U.S. Coast Guard aircraft. Flight Monitor said it has tracked hundreds of flights using Coast Guard planes to transport migrants domestically since June 2025.
“ICE sometimes appears to operate commercial flights to destinations where it does not operate larger-scale ICE Air deportation flights,” said Savi Arvey, director of refugee and immigrant rights research and analysis at Human Rights First.
Monitors use flight tracking websites to track charter planes, but those tools can’t track individual passengers on commercial flights, making them “less in the public eye,” Arvey said. “This adds another level of transparency.”
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Associated Press contributors include Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C., reporting from Seattle.
