Sawt Falasteen - Defiant protests over US immigration crackdown, child's detention

Dozens of eateries, attractions and other businesses shuttered as part of a day of coordinated action to defy the weeks-long federal immigration operation playing out in the midwestern state of Minnesota.

Images of an apparently terrified pre-schooler, Liam Conejo Ramos, being held by immigration officers who were seeking to arrest the boy's father has rekindled public outrage at the federal crackdown during which an agent shot dead a US citizen.

The superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Ramos was a preschool student, said the child and his Ecuadoran father, Adrian Conejo Arias -- both asylum seekers -- were taken from their driveway as they arrived home on Tuesday.

Ramos was then used as "bait" by immigration officers to knock on the door of his home to draw out those inside, superintendent Zena Stenvik added.

Thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been deployed to the Democratic-led city, as President Donald Trump presses his campaign to deport undocumented immigrants across the country.

On a visit to Minneapolis on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance confirmed Ramos was among those detained, but argued that agents were protecting him after his father "ran" from officers.

"What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?" he said.

The UN human rights chief Volker Turk called on US authorities to end the "dehumanizing portrayal and harmful treatment of migrants and refugees."

Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro, whose Texas constituency includes a San Antonio ICE detention center to which it was thought Ramos was taken, said he was seeking updates on his welfare and whereabouts.

- 'Dealing with children' -

Border Patrol senior official Gregory Bovino defended his officers' treatment of Ramos, telling reporters Friday: "I will say unequivocally that we are experts in dealing with children."

ICE commander Marcos Charles said Friday "my officers did everything they could to reunite him with his family" and alleged that Ramos's family refused to open the door to him after his father left him and ran from officers.

Ramos and his father were at a "family residential center pending their immigration proceedings," he added after alleging they entered the United States illegally and were "deportable."

Charles claimed that "agitators" with shields had gathered outside the federal facility where he was speaking, a flashpoint for anti-ICE protests.

The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office said dispersal orders were issued for an "unlawful protest."

Ramos's teacher, whose name was given as Ella, called him "a bright young student."

"All I want is for him to be back here and safe," she said in a statement Wednesday.

In Minneapolis, where temperatures touched -23C (-9F) on Friday, protesters wrapped in hats, gloves and scarves chanted "ICE out" after anti-Trump group Indivisible Twin Cities called for a day of "No work. No school. No shopping" as part of a broader anti-ICE protest action.

Separately, protesters picketed outside Minneapolis St. Paul airport over the facility's use for deporting those swept up in immigration raids, with local media citing organizers as saying some 100 clergy were arrested.

- 'Just a baby' -

Former US vice president Kamala Harris said she was "outraged" by Ramos's detention and called him "just a baby."

Ramos is one of at least four children detained in the same Minneapolis school district this month, local administrators said.

Minneapolis has been rocked by increasingly tense protests since federal agents shot and killed US citizen Renee Good on January 7.

An autopsy concluded that killing was a homicide, a classification that does not automatically mean a crime was committed.

The officer who fired the shots that killed Good, Jonathan Ross, has neither been suspended nor charged.

Marc Prokosch, the lawyer for Ramos and his father, said they followed the law in applying for asylum in Minneapolis, which is a sanctuary city where police do not cooperate with federal immigration.

Children have long been caught up in federal immigration enforcement, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Minnesota has sought a temporary restraining order for the ICE operation in the state which, if granted by a federal judge, would pause the sweeps. There will be a hearing on the application Monday.

J.Saleh--SF-PST