Judge Releases 5-Year-Old, Reminding Us How Bleak Everything Is Right Now - Above the Law

"Judge Fred Biery of the Western District of Texas issued an order releasing five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias from the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. Liam became a symbol of the human cost of the Trump administration's occupying surge in Minnesota when a camera caught him standing in the cold with a blue bunny hat and backpack while government agents arrested the child."

"That said, the order is "SIGNED this 31st day of February, 2026." Which is, of course, not a date. But it's also a pretty easy error to understand. The judge probably expected to drop the order on February 1 (or the 2nd), perhaps after padding the sparse document with some additional facts and analysis, but ultimately decided there's no time like the present to free a five-year-old from an internment camp. He slapped a "31" into the date slot and forgot to change the month."

"Judge Biery may have fired off a bare bones opinion, but it only takes a handful of sentences to lay out the legal issue: Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster. That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer. This is, of course, exactly right."

Judge Fred Biery ordered the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Conejo Arias from the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. Liam had become a symbol after a camera captured him standing in the cold with a blue bunny hat and backpack while agents arrested him. The order criticized what it called a "perfidious lust for unbridled power" and emphasized that administrative warrants issued by the executive to itself do not satisfy probable cause. The order mistakenly dated itself "SIGNED this 31st day of February, 2026," an obvious clerical error that did not alter the ruling's substance. The ruling affirmed the constitutional need for independent judicial warrants.

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