AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos is among the detainees at an immigration detention center in Texas. You have probably seen the photo of him being detained in Minnesota last week, that blue beanie hat with bunny ears, that Spider-Man backpack. The Department of Homeland Security says Conejo Ramos and his father entered the U.S. illegally in 2024. Now, the family disputes that and says they came here legally to seek asylum. Well, Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro, a Democrat, visited Liam yesterday at the detention center and joins us now to talk about that visit. Welcome, Congressman.
JOAQUIN CASTRO: Good to be with you.
CHANG: So how is Liam doing right now?
CASTRO: He didn't look well to me, to be honest. Jasmine Crockett and I spent about 30 minutes with Liam and his dad, and his dad said that he'd not been eating well, that he's been sleeping a lot because he's depressed, and asking for his mom and for his classmates and to be back at school. But yeah, he didn't look good.
CHANG: I'm so sorry to hear that. What about Liam's father, Adrian Conejo Arias? How is he doing?
CASTRO: You know, I think for both of them, it's a kind of trauma being at Dilley. And my sense was that he was trying to hold things together as much as possible for his son. And he's worried about his wife 'cause his wife is four months pregnant and had to go to the emergency room right after Liam was taken in. And, you know, there's obviously a lot of concern for his family.
CHANG: Is she doing all right at the moment? Do you know?
CASTRO: Yeah, I - right after I finished the inspection of Dilley, the first thing I did was to call Liam's mom. She said she was OK, but, you know, I think a lot of it is folks trying to kind of grin and bear it, so to speak, and deal with what is a real tragedy 'cause these folks did come to the country legally. They had permission to be in the United States while their asylum claim is processed.
CHANG: I do want to say that the Department of Homeland Security is maintaining that they came into the country illegally. But you dispute that, yes?
CASTRO: Yeah. I mean, our best understanding from their attorney and even in other reporting is that they had applied for asylum.
CHANG: With respect to the conditions at Dilley, I want to note that one of your colleagues, Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales, also of Texas, I saw that he told a local station that when he visited the facility, he said the conditions weren't that bad. I'm going to use his words here. Quote, "To be frank, it is in better condition than some of our schools here in San Antonio." What do you make of Gonzales' characterization of Dilley there?
CASTRO: Yeah, you know, Tony and I both represent the San Antonio area. And I've not talked to him about this, but, for example, when I went into the medical area in all the exam rooms, there was nobody there. There were so many people that said that they had not gotten their medicine, their medicine was late, that people have some serious food allergies, for example, and that's not being taken into account. So, you know, on the surface, I think you might go there and say, oh, well, yeah, look, everything looks kind of OK. But when you talk to the people and hear what's going on, it's a very different story.
CHANG: If we can talk about the larger backdrop, though, you know, the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, President Trump has tried to shake up the leadership there now, replacing the Border Patrol official Greg Bovino with border czar Tom Homan. And Homan said today that he is going to fix the situation in Minneapolis. Are you encouraged to see this change in leadership? Do you think it's a step forward to fixing what's going on there?
CASTRO: I don't think it's a step forward to fixing it. I certainly hope it is. I don't think it is. When Tom Homan gets up there and says we're going to start narrowing this operation and pulling some ICE officers out, to me, what that means is they know that they're wrong, they know that they killed two American citizens and they just don't want to admit they're wrong, don't want to admit mistakes and don't want to apologize.
CHANG: What specifically do you think needs to change in how immigration enforcement operations are conducted at the moment?
CASTRO: Well, I believe that ICE should be disbanded. I believe that it's become an abusive organization. And, you know, don't get me wrong, we still need to have immigration enforcement in the United States of America. I think, you know, we can all agree on that. But it shouldn't look like this, and I don't think it should be done by ICE.
CHANG: Then who should it be done by?
CASTRO: I think that you've got to create a new organization, a new agency. And remember, ICE was created during the war on terror in the early 2000s, and that's why you see these very intense and brutal crackdowns, because ICE starts with the assumption that everybody's a criminal, and so we're going to treat you like a criminal, including a 5-year-old boy with a backpack and a hat.
CHANG: That is Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas. Thank you very much for your time today.
CASTRO: Great to be with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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