A federal court order that lit up social media for its theatrical scolding of immigration authorities carried a small problem at the bottom of the page: it was dated February 31, 2026. A date that does not exist.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery's ruling freeing 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from the Dilley ICE detention center in Texas drew national attention for its blistering rhetoric and its sweeping constitutional claims. But the impossible date on the signing line — spotted almost immediately by observers online — captured something else entirely about the order: the gap between its grandiosity and its craftsmanship.

Social media users wasted no time.

"This is dated February 31. Today is January 31."

"Why is it dated February 31st?"

As reported by Newsweek, the court header shows the document was actually filed January 31, 2026. Someone in the judge's chambers, in the rush to issue a politically charged broadside against federal immigration enforcement, apparently couldn't be bothered to check a calendar.

The Case Behind the Circus

On January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation in the Minneapolis area to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, described by the Department of Homeland Security as "an illegal alien from Ecuador who was RELEASED into the U.S. by the Biden administration." The operation was not, as much of the coverage implied, a random dragnet that swept up a kindergartner.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin laid out the agency's account plainly:

"ICE did NOT target a child. On January 20, ICE conducted a targeted operation to arrest Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias an illegal alien from Ecuador who was RELEASED into the U.S. by the Biden administration. As agents approached the driver Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, fled on foot—abandoning his child."

According to DHS, for the child's safety, one ICE officer remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias. The father fled. An officer stayed behind to protect the boy. The pair was then transported roughly 1,300 miles to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley — a facility specifically designed to house immigrant families with underage children who have been accused of violating federal immigration law.

That's the sequence of events. A targeted arrest of an illegal immigrant released under the prior administration. A father who ran. A child is protected by the agents supposedly terrorizing him. A family detention facility — not a dungeon.

A Judge With a Quill and a Grudge

Judge Biery — appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton — didn't merely order the release of Liam and his father. He delivered what reads less like a judicial opinion and more like an op-ed submission, complete with references to the Magna Carta, Blackstone's Commentaries, Ex parte Bollman, and the Declaration of Independence.

He described the enforcement operation as:

"ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented"

And claimed it:

"has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children."

Biery invoked Thomas Jefferson's complaints about "Swarms of Officers to harass our People" and "Standing Armies," then added his own gloss:

"We the people are hearing echoes of that history."

He took aim at administrative warrants — the standard tool used by every presidential administration for immigration enforcement — calling them warrants "issued by the executive branch to itself" and declaring:

"That is called the fox guarding the henhouse."

He even worked in Benjamin Franklin:

"A republic, if you can keep it."

And the pièce de résistance:

"The Constitution of these United States trumps this administration's detention."

One suspects the verb choice there was not accidental.

The Problem With Judicial Theatrics

There is a reason judges are expected to write with precision rather than passion. Precision is the currency of the law. When a judge spends pages invoking the Founders, lecturing elected officials, and comparing routine immigration enforcement to colonial tyranny — and then can't even date the order correctly — it tells you where the priorities were.

Every administration has used administrative warrants for immigration enforcement. Every one. The Supreme Court settled the legality of these instruments long ago. Biery's ruling treats a standard law enforcement mechanism as though it were invented last month in a smoke-filled room, which is a neat rhetorical trick if your audience isn't paying close attention.

The ruling requires that Liam and his father remain released under conditions no more restrictive than those before their detention while their immigration case continues. Their case is still pending — meaning they are in deportation proceedings before an immigration judge. The legal process is ongoing. Biery didn't declare them innocent or resolve their status. He inserted himself into an enforcement action and decorated the intervention with Enlightenment philosophy and a date that doesn't exist on any calendar.

The Predictable Chorus

Senator Amy Klobuchar rushed to post on X:

"Welcome home, Liam. A 5-year-old should be in school and with family—not in detention. I'm relieved he and his father are finally headed back to Minnesota. Now ICE needs to leave."

A sitting United States senator is telling federal law enforcement to vacate her state. Not "ICE should reform its procedures." Not "we need better coordination." Just — leave. Stop enforcing the law.

Columbia Heights Public Schools posted on Facebook that four other students were being held at the Dilley facility and called for the "reunification of families who have been unjustly separated." The word "unjustly" is doing extraordinary work in that sentence, given that the families in question are in federal custody for alleged violations of immigration law.

What Actually Happened Here

Strip away the Founding Father cosplay and the social media outrage cycle, and here is what you have:

• An illegal immigrant, released into the country under the Biden administration, was the target of a lawful ICE operation.
• When agents approached, the father fled on foot, leaving his 5-year-old child behind in a running vehicle.
• ICE officers protected the child and eventually detained both father and son at a family residential facility — not separately, together.
• A Clinton-appointed judge issued an order dripping with political commentary, anchored in historical references, and signed with an impossible date.

The child's situation is genuinely sympathetic. A 5-year-old bears no responsibility for his parents' immigration decisions or his father's choice to run from federal agents. That is real, and it matters. But sympathy for a child does not require pretending that enforcing immigration law is unconstitutional, or that a judge's florid political statement becomes more legally sound because it quotes Benjamin Franklin.

Calendars Don't Lie

McLaughlin also noted the option available to families in these proceedings:

"Parents can take control of their departure and receive a free flight and $2,600 with the CBP Home app. By using the CBP Home app illegal aliens reserve the chance to come back the right legal way."

There is a legal way to come to this country. There is a legal process underway for this family right now. And there is a federal judge who wanted so badly to make a political statement that he cited the Magna Carta, quoted two Founding Fathers, accused the government of tyranny, and then dated his masterpiece February 31st.

The calendar caught what the judge missed. The rest of us should be paying just as close attention.