Critic’s Notebook

In Under 500 Words, a Judge Weaponized Wit to Free the Child Detained by ICE

Our critic annotates the barbed wordplay of a decision challenging the Trump administration’s theory of executive power.

By A.O. Scott

A.O. Scott is a critic at large for the Book Review.

Feb. 3, 2026

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One of the many unsettling images to emerge from the recent ICE surge in Minneapolis was that of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in his blue bunny hat, standing in the January cold with the hand of a federal officer gripping his Spider-Man backpack.

Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, were taken from Minnesota to Texas and held at a detention facility outside San Antonio. Lawyers working on their behalf filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, an ancient judicial principle forbidding the government from holding anyone in custody without providing a legally tenable reason for doing so. On Saturday, Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas’ Western District, granted their petition, freeing them.