MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The father of a 5-year-old boy who was detained by immigration officers and held at a federal facility in Texas denied government accounts Monday that he abandoned his son last month while being pursued by authorities.

As the pair returned to Minnesota, Adrian Conejo Arias, who is originally from Ecuador, told ABC News that he loves his son, Liam, and would never abandon him, disputing statements from the Department of Homeland Security, which alleged that Arias had left his child in a vehicle. He also said his son got sick while in federal custody but was denied medicine.

Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Arias fled on foot before he was arrested, “abandoning his child.” She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stayed with the boy.

“The facts in this case have NOT changed: The father who was illegally in the country chose to take his child with him to a detention center,” she said.

McLaughlin did not address Arias’ statement that his son was denied medication while in custody.

Arias also said he was arrested unjustly and contended he was in the country legally, with a pending court hearing for asylum.

The comments come after a federal judge ordered over the weekend that the pair be freed. They were released Sunday and returned to Minnesota, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas.

The family’s arrest and release unfolded during President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration, which has led to daily protests that included the shooting deaths of two American citizens by federal officers.

Neighbors celebrated the boy’s return but his school in Columbia Heights had to cancel class after receiving bomb threats. Authorities said they did not find any dangerous devices, and school was set to resume Tuesday.

Even before the threats, the district has felt under siege. Over two dozen parents of students at Liam’s school, Valley View Elementary, have been detained, Principal Jason Kuhlman said Friday in an interview, leaving children without their caretakers.

“We hate Mondays. And it’s because we find out how many of our parents were taken over the weekend,” Kuhlman said.

The school started offering online classes last week because many parents were afraid to come to school, even with volunteers patrolling grounds during drop-off and dismissal times. Almost 200 students were absent one day in a school of around 570, said Kuhlman. Normally, only 20 or 30 kids would be absent.

The boy’s detention drew outrage as images of immigration officers surrounding the young boy in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack began to surface.

The government said the boy’s father entered the U.S. illegally from Ecuador in December 2024. The family’s lawyer said he has a pending asylum claim that allows him to stay in the U.S.

The vast majority of asylum-seekers are released in the United States, with adults having eligibility for work permits, while their cases wind through a backlogged court system.

The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review’s online court docket shows no future hearings for Liam’s father.

Liam’s return gave some hope to other families in similar circumstances.

On Sunday, Luis Zuna held up photographs of his 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, whom he said had been detained, along with her mother, Rosa, while they were heading to the school bus stop on Jan. 6. They’ve been held for nearly a month at the same facility where Liam and his father were held.

Zuna sends them some money for calls and for food because Elizabeth especially doesn’t like the meals there. They’re from Ecuador and they’ve been in Minnesota for four years.

“It’s been really hard to come home and there’s nobody,” he said. “And they are there locked up. My daughter wants to get out of there.”

Carolina Gutierrez, who works as a secretary at the school that Elizabeth attended, compared the situation to Liam’s “but there were no pictures,” she said.

Zuna, following word of Liam and his father’s return, sounded somewhat optimistic.

“For me, it’s a hope that very soon I can also be the same, with all my family back,” he said in Spanish.

‘No beds, no real blankets’ at detention center, congresswoman says

A member of Congress who was denied entry into an ICE detention facility in Minnesota last month said she saw inhumane conditions when she finally got in over the weekend.

And on Monday, a federal judge in Washington issued a temporary restraining order requested by the representative and 12 other members of Congress against a Trump administration policy that had blocked lawmakers’ access to ICE detention facilities.

Democratic Rep. Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, who is a physician, said there was no nurse present during her visit and that no real medical care is being offered to detainees.

“There are no beds, no real blankets, minimal food, extremely cold temperatures. People are in locked cells, in leg shackles,” Morrison said Sunday in a social media post.