A 10-year-old Minnesota girl has been released from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after a month in detention in Dilley, Texas, school officials said, one of hundreds of children detained at the facility.
Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano, a fourth-grader, and her mother walked free from the immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, on Tuesday night. Elizabeth is a student in the school district of Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, which is also home to five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was released from Dilley over the weekend amid widespread outrage about his detention.
Elizabeth and her mother were taken by federal agents on 6 January, the first of five students from the Columbia Heights district to be detained by ICE during the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the region, school leaders said. The family, originally from Ecuador, has an active asylum case, school officials said.
The girl and her mother were at a Texas shelter as of Wednesday morning, a family attorney said, and would be heading back to Minnesota to reunite with her father.
There have been growing concerns about Elizabeth’s health as federal officials confirmed that Dilley, which houses families, is now the site of a measles outbreak. Hundreds of children are detained at the facility.
Carolina Gutierrez, principal secretary at Highland elementary, Elizabeth’s school, has been assisting the family and told the Guardian on Wednesday that the girl was experiencing flu-like symptoms and her mother had broken out in hives, but they had not yet received a medical assessment.
“I’m just excited to see Elizabeth come back to school. I’m extremely happy and relieved, and we have to continue advocating and speaking up for other people to come home,” Gutierrez said.
Elizabeth and her mother had been picked up by agents on the way to school, and the girl was able to call her father during the arrests, acting as an interpreter for her family and telling her dad that officers would drop her off at school, Gutierrez said.
The father has said he rushed to the elementary school and waited for hours with school staff, but Elizabeth never arrived. By the end of that day, Elizabeth and her mother had both already been flown to Texas. Tracy Xiong, a school social worker, recounted the episode at a press conference on Tuesday with Tim Walz, Minnesota’s governor, saying the father had been inconsolable after his family was picked up, according to the Sahan Journal, a local news outlet.
“That image of Elizabeth’s father will stay with me forever,” Xiong said. “I watched him sit in his car, bury his head in his hands, and cry uncontrollably.”
When Elizabeth was detained, she assumed she was being sent back to Ecuador, Gutierrez said: “When she was flown to Texas, she thought her dreams were over. She dreams of being a doctor. She’s pleaded with her dad: ‘Get me out of here. I want to go back home. I want to go back to school. I want to eat good food.’ … Mom and Dad didn’t understand why they were being treated like this. They were like, we didn’t do anything wrong.”
Gutierrez, who has been working with the father and raising funds for the family, said: “He has been sad and desperate for answers. He hasn’t been able to sleep. He doesn’t have an appetite. He felt very helpless.”
Elizabeth’s case was assigned to the US judge Fred Biery, who had ordered Liam’s release. The judge argued that the boy’s case “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children”.
Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in San Antonio, Texas, on 31 January after being released from the Dilley detention center. Photograph: Joaquin Castro via AP
On Monday, Biery issued an order blocking the removal or transfer of Elizabeth and her mother and giving the federal government five days to respond to the family’s release petition.
Their sudden release the following day came as something of a surprise, said Bobby Painter, managing attorney with the Texas Immigration Law Council, a non-profit representing the family.
Elizabeth and her mother should never have been detained, he said: “This didn’t have to happen. This is a family going through the process as it was intended. They presented at the border as asylum seekers and were admitted to the country. That case is still ongoing. They did everything they were supposed to do and still found themselves detained and separated.”
Painter said Elizabeth was an “avid reader” and “really wants to get back into that routine”.
In the wake of growing backlash against the detention of Elizabeth, Liam, and other Minnesota students, including a two-year-old girl, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said it gives arrested parents an opportunity to have their children detained with them or placed into the custody of another adult.
But Columbia Heights officials have countered that agents have made it difficult or impossible for parents to place their children with others during often chaotic arrests.
The DHS defended the detention of the girl in a statement, saying that after Elizabeth’s mother was arrested, “officers allowed her to make phone calls to place the child in the custody of someone she designated”. The DHS’s statement said: “She failed to find a trusted adult to care for the child, so officers kept the family together for the welfare of the child.”
That account is contradicted by the assertions of her family and school officials, who said the father was ready to take custody, and the DHS did not respond to questions about the discrepancies.
The DHS also said Elizabeth’s mother had a “final order of removal”. Painter disputed that characterization, saying one judge had denied asylum, but the family filed a timely appeal, which is still pending, meaning there is no final removal order.
Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the private prison corporation that runs Dilley, declined to comment on Elizabeth’s case and the measles outbreak, saying in an email that CoreCivic has doctors and mental health professionals on staff who “meet the highest standards of care”. Dilley, Todd said, provides residents a “continuum of health care services, including screening, prevention, health education, diagnosis and treatment”.
Liam’s case received international attention after his photo went viral, but his case is not unique, advocates say.
ICE booked about 3,800 minors into immigrant family detention from January to October 2025, including children as young as one or two years old, according to a Guardian analysis of detention data.
“Family detention is very traumatic for children, even for relatively short periods,” Painter said. “Children should not be detained under any circumstances, period. The entire practice of family detention is immoral and bad policy, and I hope there is continued public attention on this until we don’t have any more kids in this position.”
Gutierrez said the community had stepped up to defend families, but that the detention of Elizabeth and others had taken a toll on families: “The trauma is following these kids into classrooms. The students fear for themselves and their classmates. Every day, they wonder if they are going to see their classmates tomorrow.”
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Elizabeth Caisaguano. Photograph: Columbia Heights school district
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Elizabeth Caisaguano. Photograph: Columbia Heights school district
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