This is Brian Lear's Daily Politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Tuesday, February 3rd.

A five-year-old boy in a blue bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack should not be a national news story.

But that's exactly what happened when Liam Conejo Ramos, a pre-kindergarner from Minnesota,

was arrested and detained by U.S. immigration authorities and sent with his father to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.

Liam did not commit a crime. He is a child who,

according to his mother, became sick in detention and appeared pale and withdrawn when a member of

Congress visited him there. Liam is no outlier. Over the past year, thousands of children have

been arrested and held by U.S. immigration authorities, including infants,

toddlers, elementary school students, and teenagers pulled from their routines and placed

behind locked doors.

According to government data cited by our guest, at least 3,800 children were detained

in 2025 alone, including 20 infants. Many had lived in the United States for years. Some were

detained at schools. And though a federal judge ordered Liam and his father released last weekend,

this is an ongoing story. Our guest is Elora Mukherjee, a clinical professor of law at

Columbia Law School and director of its Immigrants' Rights

Clinic. She has spent months inside the Dilley Detention Center representing families and

documenting conditions she describes as unlawful, unnecessary, and profoundly harmful to children.

She joins us now to talk about what's happening to children like Liam

and what could be done differently, which she's written about in an opinion essay for the New York

Times headlined, Liam Ramos was just one of hundreds of children at this detention center.

Release them all. Professor Mukherjee, welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for having me.

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