Elvis Tipan Echeverria: 2-year-old taken into ICE custody with father in Minnesota and flown to Texas, lawyer says
A 2-year-old girl was taken into ICE custody with her father on Thursday in Minneapolis and flown to Texas before she was returned to her mother Friday afternoon, a family lawyer said.
The child’s transfer to Texas took place despite a court order requiring her immediate release, according to the affidavit filed by the family attorney. The toddler’s father, identified as Elvis Tipan-Echeverria, remains in custody, the family’s attorney Kira Kelley told CNN Friday evening.
The father and daughter were on the same flight returning to Minnesota on Friday afternoon, Kelley said. “The child is out of detention as of this afternoon, and recovering from this horrific ordeal,” Kelley said.
The toddler and her father were initially being held at a federal facility in Minneapolis on Thursday after agents pursued their vehicle in a “targeted enforcement operation,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN Friday. Lawyers for the family identified that facility as the Whipple Federal Building. The building has served as the backdrop of tense standoffs between agents and protesters following the death of Minneapolis resident Renee Good earlier this month.
The father and the toddler, identified only as C.R.T.V. in court documents, are citizens of Ecuador, and the child has lived in Minneapolis “since her arrival in the United States as a newborn” and has a pending asylum application.
The incident comes as outrage continues to grow over federal agents taking 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in the driveway of his home in Minneapolis this week during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the state. The boy was later put on a plane with his father to a family detention facility in Texas, where they remain.
During the encounter with Tipan-Echeverria and his daughter, DHS said the father was “driving erratically with a child in the vehicle.” The father would then park the vehicle when federal agents attempted to take him into custody; however, “he refused multiple lawful commands to open his door or lower his window,” the agency said.
The toddler and her father had just returned home from the store and were inside their vehicle when ICE agents entered the backyard and driveway area of the home “without a warrant,” the affidavit says. One agent “broke the glass on the window” of Tipan-Echeverria’s vehicle while the toddler was also inside before the father and daughter exited the car, the affidavit says.
CNN has reached out to DHS to inquire about the removal of the father and toddler to Texas, and the claim that agents had taken both without a warrant.
Video from the incident, which took place just after 1 p.m., shows people surrounding armed and masked federal agents and what appeared to be a federal vehicle. One man was heard yelling, “They were carrying a child in that!” seemingly referring to the federal vehicle.
Some of the people at the scene started backing away as federal agents deployed what seemed to be a chemical agent. As the federal agents drove away, protesters continued to yell at them. “Help him!” one person yelled out.
Roughly 120 people “surrounded the agents blocking them in and preventing exit” during the arrest, DHS said. “Agitators in the crowd then began to throw rocks and garbage cans toward the agents and child,” prompting agents to deploy crowd control measures to “safely clear the area,” the statement continued.
DHS noted that obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and federal crime.
Federal agents attempted to give the child to the mother, “who was in the area, but she refused,” DHS claimed. Federal agents “took care of the child who the mother would not take,” before the father and child were “reunited” at a federal facility, DHS said.
However, the family’s lawyer said the child’s mother was standing outside and was near her husband as the couple were “calling out to each other” and the father tried to bring the child to her mother, but ICE agents “would not allow” it, the affidavit said.
Upon seeing ICE agents approach her, the mother stepped back inside the house and was “terrified,” according to the affidavit. At that point, the father and his child were placed in the back of an ICE vehicle, which “did not have a car seat,” the affidavit said.
The allegations from DHS about the girl’s mother refusing to take custody of her child echo a similar statement from the agency in the case of Liam, saying the boy’s mother also refused to take custody of him. But Liam’s mother, according to Pastor Sergio Amezcua, who has been helping her with the case, was “terrified” of the agents outside her door.
In the case of Tipan-Echeverria and his daughter, attorneys for the family said: “Needless to say, she has no criminal history,” in an emergency petition to immediately release the toddler from federal custody to Kelley, who signed a notarized delegation of parental authority with the mother and custodial guardian.
The court granted the petition to immediately release the child, transferring custody of her temporarily to the attorney “for the purpose of retrieving the infant from immigration detention,” by 9:30 p.m. Thursday, the court documents said.
The court order determined “the risk of irreparable harm to maintain child in custody under the circumstances described in the pleadings are overwhelming.”
The father and his child were on a commercial airline flight to Texas by 8:30 p.m. that same day, despite the order issued at 8:11 p.m. that they should not be removed from Minnesota, their lawyer said in the affidavit, citing a conversation with a DHS counsel.
The agency then told the family’s attorney that it would fly the child back to Minnesota on Friday, the affidavit says. Kelley, the family lawyer, said she had not been able to contact her clients since they were taken into custody, according to the affidavit.
A federal court order has barred ICE from sending the father outside of Minnesota while court proceedings play out, Kelley’s statement said.
