As our Jorge Bonilla pointedly wrote when analyzing the Thursday night network newscasts, the liberal, elite media have shown — through their new interest in this tall tale about a five-year-old Minneapolis boy being used as “bait” by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to lure back his day — a concentrated, new, and sudden concern for the plight of children caught up in the illegal immigration fiasco wrought over the last four years. Friday’s lead morning and evening network newscasts were no different, expressing horror over the “disturbing,” “haunting,” “powerful,” and “upsetting” images and narrative (concocted by a slew of AWFLs that seem to run the school district the child was attending). By the evening, they zoomed out to also celebrate the anti-ICE mobs shutting down the area airport and, in one case, suck up to far-left Attorney General Keith Ellison (D). First up, we have CBS Mornings with co-host Gayle King channeling all the sympathy points of those not fully engaged on what seems to have happened: ‘CBS Mornings’ co-host Gayle King on the “very disturbing,” “very upsetting” “controversy” with the five-year-old and ICE... “Now to the newest controversy over the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. It involves a five-year-old boy, his name is Liam Ramos. Look at his face.… pic.twitter.com/RS9yZzSJIr — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 23, 2026 Correspondent Nicole Sganga picked it up from there: Friday’s ‘CBS Mornings’, using a team of AWFLs that run the school district which the five-year-old attended — fully leans into the emotions and narrative that ICE grabbed the kid and cruelly denied the school board chair the chance to take the child for herself pic.twitter.com/q0AHARxgtl — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 23, 2026 “We spoke with school officials who were there saying that they consoled the boy’s sobbing mother after ICE agents took her husband and son away from her...More than half a dozen federal agents were seen on cell phone video Tuesday surrounding this five-year-old boy wearing a bunny hat and a Spiderman backpack. Liam Ramos was taken into custody, along with his dad, Ecuadorian asylum seeker Andriana Alexander Conejo Arias,” Sganga explained. Amid a slew of soundbites from the AWFLs at the school district (whose story about the child having been “bait” now thoroughly debunked even The Washington Post issued a correction), Sganga threw in a few lines from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (click “expand”): COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, MINNESOTA PUBLIC SCHOOLS SUPERINTENDENT ZENA STENVIK: Over the last few weeks, ICE agents have been roaming our neighborhoods, circling our schools, following our buses, coming into our parking lots multiple times and taking our kids. SGANGA: In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said “ICE did not target...a child,” adding he was “abandoned” by the father who “fled on foot” after officers tried to arrest him and further added that Conejo Arias wanted the child to remain with him once he was detained. DHS also said attempted to reunite the child with his mother, but she refused to take custody. But according to school board chair Mary Granlund, that’s not how it happened. She says she saw it herself. COLUMBIA HEIGHTS PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD CHAIR MARY GRANLUND: Somebody else saw me and said to the agents, school is here, the school is here. They can take him. And I said, yes, I am here. I am here. I can help with that. SGANGA [TO GRANLUND]: You offered to take him, and you saw ICE agents drive away with the five-year-old boy? GRANLUND: Yes. Two soundbites from Vice President JD Vance later (though one was Sganga arguing the federal government are the ones who have to be “turning down the temperature”), she concluded by parroting “the family’s lawyer” that the boy and his dad “entered the country in 2024 at a Brownsville border crossing down in Texas” and “submitted an asylum claim through what’s called the CBP1 app and were following through on steps throughout the immigration process.” Unsurprisingly, DHS says they have no record of the father actually doing the latter steps. Friday’s CBS Evening News took things to another level. The set-up even included the debunked “bait” narrative: Friday’s ‘CBS Evening News’ had yet another story on “the battle over the power of that powerful image of the five-year-old” with ICE that promoted the “bait” hoax, claims from the school district AWFLs, and a suck-up interview to AG Keith Ellison (D) fretting ICE came “to punish… pic.twitter.com/gDn4BdGCJq — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 24, 2026 Sganga opened by pointing to the “thousands” who “braved subfreezing temperatures in the Twin Cities to protest ICE, with businesses declaring Black-Out Friday.” Shifting to the child, she aired a brief soundbite from Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino “defend[ing] ICE agents” before reairing her exchange with the school board official and later when she indirectly accused Homeland Security of lying about the father’s immigration status. The bottom really dropped out as she never brought up the Somali welfare fraud and took Ellison at his word that the ICE surge was some vague “political tactic…to punish municipal leaders.” And, when Ellison said he can state for a fact the federal government won’t investigate the ICE agent in the Renee Good case, Sganga expressed horror: “I think that’s going to make a lot of people in the state and in this country angry.” Shifting to Good Morning America, they were still running full-speed aboard the disinformation train: ABC — the most anti-Trump broadcast network — went out on Friday’s Good Morning America with lies about the five-year-old and ICE in Minneapolis, saying “the haunting images spark[ed] a firestorm” and promoting the debunked lie the child was “used...as bait” to lure the father pic.twitter.com/WCxMnCaqaU — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 23, 2026 Correspondent Matt Rivers claimed: A preschool boy standing in the Minnesota cold, swept up in the ICE crackdown. Schools officials say five-year-old Liam and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, had just pulled into their suburban Minneapolis driveway Tuesday when agents took that father into custody. The school then saying an agent “essentially used the five year old as bait,” directing him to see if anyone else was home before taking the boy away. Witnesses say multiple people, including the boy’s mother, offered to take him. Rivers would only for ICE’s position that said “DHS [has been] telling different story saying, ‘ICE did not target a child,’ claiming Liam’s father is undocumented immigrant who ‘fled on foot - abandoning’ his son in the driveway.” Once a short soundbite ran of Vance wondering “what are” ICE agents “supposed to do” in that situation, Rivers went back to the other side of the coin (click “expand”): RIVERS: The attorney says father and son entered the U.S. legally. MARK PROKOSCH: Liam and his dad did enter at port of entry to seek asylum and they have shared their information with the government and they were following the process. RIVERS: Now, the school district says four students have recently been detained. We now know that Liam and his father are both being held together at a processing facility outside of San Antonio.  Rivers stuck around for Friday’s World News Tonight and, on the positive side, he must have thought it was time to tell viewers about Thursday morning’s three arrests in the anti-ICE mob’s Sunday attack on a church: PATHETIC: After nothing on either of ABC's major newscasts Thursday (AM or PM) and Friday morning, Friday's 'World News Tonight' spared 15 seconds from correspondent Matt Rivers to mention three from the anti-ICE, church-storming mob are facing charges from the Justice Department pic.twitter.com/iaUCyGm5rK — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 24, 2026 In totality, however, the piece was still heavily pro-mob: Friday’s ‘World News Tonight’ featured more anti-ICE slop on ABC, touting the “tens of thousands in the streets” and “ICE defending its own agents after taking this five-year-old boy into custody after the local school district said [he] had been detained” and “[t]he family… pic.twitter.com/8FRIn2bhDD — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 24, 2026 NBC’s Today went with co-host Craig Melvin saying Vance “blam[ed] local Democratic officials and agitators for the ongoing tensions there amid new arrests, and the growing backlash after federal agents detained a five-year-old boy.” Of course not admitting the media’s role in driving this, correspondent Maggie Vespa said “the spotlight on the story of this preschooler…is growing rapidly” and a symbol of “the mayhem surrounding President Trump’s immigration crackdown.’ After a he-said, he-said between DHS and the family’s advocates, Vespa touted part of her questions to Vance at a Thursday press conference about whether he sympathizes with those who feel ICE’s existence in the Twin Cities “makes them feel less safe.” Vespa at least had the courtesy to spend 40 seconds on the charges against the ringleaders of the St. Paul church storming. Vespa’s Friday NBC Nightly News report was a catch-all of liberal narratives, including one to keep an eye on in the days to come. Friday’s ‘NBC Nightly News’ trumpeted the “massive protests against ICE,” new images from the controversial incident” with a 5-year-old, that they “pressed” Gregory Bovino on the fact that people are “outraged at the idea of little kids being held in custody,” and a new case… pic.twitter.com/K8ixAn1err — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 24, 2026 To see the relevant transcripts from January 23, click here (for ABC’s Good Morning America), here (for ABC’s World News Tonight), here (for CBS Mornings), here (for the CBS Evening News), here (for NBC’s Today), and here (for NBC Nightly News).