Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wants to quickly send 5 year-old Liam Ramos and his father out of the country.
Images of Ramos in a blue bunny hat went viral last month after he was detained by ICE officers in Minneapolis.
Ramos and his father are asylum seekers from Ecuador and have since been released from a detention center in Texas and returned to Minnesota.
But the Department of Homeland Security filed a motion to expedite deportation proceedings in the family's asylum case.
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An immigration attorney told Scripps News the development matches the Trump administration's immigration goals.
"This is just part of a much larger picture is, you know, in which the Trump administration is doing everything it possibly can quickly detain and deport as many migrants as possible," said Philip Schrag, Delaney Family professor of public interest law at Georgetown University. "Even migrants who like this family have a pending asylum case. So this family is legally in the United States because they have pending asylum case and they should not be deported until case is resolved."
Ramos' attorney says the family was following all established protocols for pursuing asylum in the U.S. and should have never been detained in the first place. They called the new effort to deport the family uncommon and retaliatory.
Trump administration officials have argued the family did not properly apply for asylum.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the case.
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Ramos and his father could be deported in a matter of weeks. A hearing in their case was scheduled for Friday. Their attorneys are requesting more time to respond to the government's motion to support the family.
