A 2-year-old was taken into US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody on Thursday in Minneapolis. The child was with her father when they were detained, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said, according to a report by NBC News.
They were flown to Texas despite a court order requiring the toddler's immediate release, CNN reported. "The child is out of detention as of this afternoon and recovering from this horrific ordeal," the family's attorney, Kira Kelley, told the publication on Friday.
Elvis Joel Tipan-Echeverria and his 2-year-old daughter, Chloe Renata Tipan Villacis, were detained and taken to South Minneapolis while they were on the way back home from the grocery store.
Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez wrote on Instagram, "A suspicious vehicle followed her father's vehicle home, broke his window and kidnapped them. No judicial warrant was provided."
The DHS said that Tipan-Echeverria was driving "erratically" with a child and is "an illegal immigrant from Ecuador who committed felony reentry and broke the laws of this nation." The spokesperson also said that the DHS took care of the child "who the mother would not take". The father and child were reunited at the federal facility, they added.
According to the DHS, Tipan-Echeverria refused to open his car door or lower his window, despite lawful commands. "Agents took Tipan-Echeverria into custody and attempted to give the child to the mother who was in the area, but she refused," the spokesperson said.
A crowd of about 120 surrounded the ICE agents and blocked them from exiting. They threw rocks and garbage cans towards the agents and the toddler before crowd control measures could be taken.
Chloe is the fifth child to be detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in recent weeks, sparking a row over US President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigrants.
ICE Detains 5-Year-Old
A 5-year-old boy arriving home from preschool in Minnesota was taken by federal agents along with his father to a detention facility in Texas, school officials and the family's lawyer said.
Federal agents took Liam Conejo Ramos from a running car in the family's driveway Tuesday afternoon, Columbia Heights Public Schools Superintendent Zena Stenvik told reporters Wednesday. The officers told him to knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside, "essentially using a 5-year-old as bait," she said.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that "ICE did NOT target a child." She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement was arresting the child's father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, who McLaughlin said is from Ecuador and in the U.S. illegally. He fled on foot, "abandoning his child," she said.
"For the child's safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias," McLaughlin said, adding that parents are given the choice to be removed with their children or have them placed with a person of their choosing.
Operation Metro Surge
Operation Metro Surge, which is costing taxpayers $18 million a week, is an ongoing large-scale immigration enforcement action conducted by US ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that began in December 2025.
Primarily targeting Minnesota, specifically the Minneapolis-Saint Paul (Twin Cities) area, the operation has been characterised as the largest federal law enforcement deployment in US history, with approximately 3,000 agents involved as of January 2026.
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