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A federal judge’s unusual order for immigration authorities to release a father and his five-year-old son over the weekend was met with fierce backlash by Republicans after it suggested the Trump administration was cruel and had a “perfidious lust for unbridled power.”
Judge Fred Biery’s brief order, laced with disapproval, said Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son Liam were seeking “nothing more than some modicum” of due process.
The judge, a Clinton appointee, included a Bible verse about Jesus crying and a viral photo of the small child wearing a backpack.
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Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, responded by adding Biery to his short list of judges he has recently been urging the House to impeach.
“This federal judge misspelled ‘impeach me—immediately.’ House GOP, you know what to do,” Lee wrote.
The Center for Immigration Studies’ law and policy fellow Andrew Arthur said the order was “bizarre.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s former chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, wrote on X: “I honestly thought this was fake.”
“I really hope this is a joke,” Mizelle wrote. “Because if not, this is the biggest validation of our criticism since Day 1 that the liberal judiciary is unhinged.”
Conservative Fox News political analyst Guy Benson called the order “lawless, overwrought resistance slop,” and his remark was shared on social media by DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
Some noted the judge dated his signature using the nonexistent “February 31st” in a legal document, in which minor technical defects tend to matter and can cause whole disruptions to cases.
Biery’s quotes made broad statements on deportations, while his observations on the specifics of the case were brief. The judge said the Trump administration showed “ignorance” of the Declaration of Independence.
“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children,” Biery wrote.
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A lawyer for the migrants, Marc Prokosch, told reporters last month that Arias and his son entered the United States at a port of entry in Texas in 2024 using the CBP One app, a controversial Biden administration tool that made it easier for migrants claiming asylum to enter the country.
“They did everything right when they came in. … ICE didn’t care about the fact that they had those pending claims,” Prokosch said.
Prokosch confirmed that they had been picked up by immigration authorities in January and taken from Minnesota to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Liam’s photo became a symbol for human rights advocates, who have widely argued the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement practices are overzealous and inhumane.
A Politico analysis found that despite the vast success the Trump administration has had in reducing illegal immigration, its deportation practices have crossed lines hundreds of times in the eyes of district court judges, including some Republican-appointed ones.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, confirmed that the government obeyed Biery’s order and moved the family back home to Minnesota, though the case remains ongoing.
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