(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Newly resurfaced photos of children abandoned by human smugglers at the southern border undercut leftist outrage over misleading claims that ICE detained a 5-year-old child in Minnesota.
The images, shared by conservative critics Saturday, highlighted what they described as glaring hypocrisy from Democrats, who largely ignored the exploitation of children under the Biden administration but suddenly expressed alarm about ICE’s operations under President Donald Trump.
For years, left-wing politicians remained largely silent as Biden’s open borders fueled a humanitarian crisis that left hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children vulnerable to traffickers.
Now, those same figures have rushed to condemn ICE over a distorted account of a Minnesota enforcement action.
The resurfaced photos, first shared by Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, depicted some of the more than 500,000 unaccompanied minors encountered by CBP during the Biden administration.
Some photos from my border coverage during the Biden administration, when we were witnessing unaccompanied children being abandoned by smugglers at the border every single day.
18,954 of these children recovered by CBP in July 2021 alone.
Over 500,000+ by end of Biden term.… pic.twitter.com/abP2kCUwHy
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) January 23, 2026
“If you weren’t watching Fox News, you probably didn’t even know it was happening,” Melugin wrote. “It appears that after a 4 year hiatus – some politicians suddenly have a reignited interest in the subject.”
In a separate post, Melugin noted that many of the same politicians “who have a lot to say right now were radio silent when we came to DC in 2022 to ask them about it.”
He also shared a video from 2022 showing him confronting Democratic lawmakers about the border crisis and the surge of unaccompanied children. Among those lawmakers were Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Bennie Thompson.
The renewed outrage followed misleading claims that the Trump administration detained a 5-year-old child during an ICE operation in Minnesota on Jan. 20.
The child, identified as Liam Conejo Ramos, had been reportedly abandoned by his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, an illegal alien from Ecuador, during an attempted apprehension.
According to ICE, agents attempted to place Liam with family members, but relatives initially refused until Conejo Arias requested that his son remain with him.
Both were ultimately transferred together to an ICE processing facility in Texas.
Despite ICE’s account of what transpired that day, leftist politicians mounted a social media campaign using the child as a political prop to attack the Trump administration. By contrast, there were no similar campaigns or sustained outrage during the Biden administration.
