JD Vance has addressed the widespread uproar relating to the news that ICE has detained at least four children in Minnesota, one of them as young as five years old.
Controversy has run rampant over the past few weeks as agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement have swept through Minneapolis in a bid to round up all individuals suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
Tensions came to a head following the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen and mother-of-three who was involved in an incident with ICE agents on the morning of January 7.
Further reports last week detailed how a number of agents ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant in the city before returning later on the same day to arrest several employees.
The growing fear of unethical treatment and operations that detractors have likened to scenes from Nazi Germany were hardly tempered earlier this week, when five-year-old preschooler Liam Ramos was said to have been taken into custody on January 20 after returning home from preschool.
According to Zena Stenvik, superintendent at Liam’s school, the young boy and his father were apprehended by ICE officials. Reports claim Liam is one of four children from the school district in the Minneapolis suburb of Columbia Heights who have been detained.
Superintendent Stenvik accused ICE agents of “roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots and taking our kids” leaving children “traumatized” and the community at large “shaken”.
Needless to say, word of children such as Liam being rounded up by ICE was met with widespread backlash online. The story garnered so much attention that Vice President JD Vance has now weighed in on the matter, once again doing his utmost to shift the blame away from ICE agents.
In a meeting which Minneapolis mayor Jacob Fry and Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara reportedly were not invited to, Vance claimed that authorities in the city are “being told by somebody not to cooperate at all” with federal agents.
“What kind of a person tells their local police, ‘Don’t protect somebody if they’re being assaulted by a rioter’. It’s crazy. And it’s got to stop,” Vance said, as per Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul.
He also argued that the blame for the current chaos unfolding in Minneapolis should be apportioned to the city itself.
“We’re seeing this level of chaos, only in Minneapolis,” Vance said. “LA and Chicago, we had some problems there. Pretty much every jurisdiction these guys are operating, you don’t see the same level of chaos, you don’t see the same level of violence, you don’t see the same problems that we’re seeing in Minneapolis.”
He added: “And it’s the lack of cooperation being state law enforcement and federal law enforcement.”
The VP also offered his opinion on the aforementioned case where five-year-old Liam Ramos and his father were detained.
“I saw this terrible story while I was coming. We just left Toledo, Ohio this morning for an economic event and I see –– and I’m a father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy.
“And I think to myself, oh, my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, I do a little bit more follow up research and what I find is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal immigrant, and that when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran.
“So, the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America?
“If the argument is that you can’t arrest people who have violated our laws because they have children, that every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement, and that doesn’t make any sense. No one thinks that makes any sense.”
According to a news release from Columbia Heights Public Schools, an adult known to Liam’s family had offered to take the child, but ICE agents refused. They reportedly instead led the boy to his front door and ordered him to knock, “essentially using a 5-year-old as bait.”
Liam’s father’s attorney vehemently denied the account of the arrest offered by federal officials, and said the man was in the country legally, awaiting asylum.
