Rachel Maddow reveals ugly details of how 5-year-old in bunny hat ended up in a Trump jail

MS NOW's Rachel Maddow revealed chilling new details on Monday about just how Immigration and Customs Enforcement managed to whisk away Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old boy in Minneapolis seen on camera in the protests, to the child detention facility in Dilley, Texas, so quickly.

In short, she explained, Delta Air Lines was complicit. To understand how this happened, Maddow turned to the work of an activist.

"Back home in Minneapolis, that plane spotter, that activist Nick Benson, he had this nagging question because in all of his weeks and weeks of watching ICE flights leave the Minneapolis airport, watching men and women in shackles go up those tarmac stairs, Nick said he'd never once seen a kid boarding one of those flights," said Maddow. "He'd never seen a little kid, like a 5-year-old, like Liam. So then how did they do it? How exactly did ICE ship Liam and his dad from Minneapolis to Texas and so quickly, within 24 hours after they grabbed him off the street?"

This mystery became the focus of Maddow's investigation.

"We know they sent this little boy to prison in Texas. How did he get there?" she continued. "How did he get from standing in his bunny hat, his black and white coat, and his Spider-Man backpack in Minnesota to a Trump prison camp one day later? How did they do it? Well, now, thanks to Nick Benson, we can see that part of the story. We can have a view now into the machinery of Trump's system for locking up little kids, for locking up families, a view that we've not had before. And it's because Nick Benson knows the Minneapolis Airport like the inside of his own car, right? Because he knows the flight schedules, he knows the layout of the gates. He knows roughly when Liam had to have traveled. And because of all that, because of what he's been doing, Nick Benson was able to tear this thing open."

The breakthrough came through official channels. After formally requesting copies of video surveillance from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Maddow said, Benson finally saw what he was looking for: footage of Liam and his father being led onto a Delta flight to San Antonio at Gate F13, by figures who were either federal agents or government contractors working with them.

According to Maddow, this discovery revealed a disturbing pattern. This, said Maddow, is the "other part of what they call ICE Air, not the flights on charter aircraft or contract aircraft that load up people in shackles, right? But this other part that is happening quietly around all the rest of us unsuspecting passengers on passenger airlines in regular airports, flying prisoners to Trump prison camps to be held without trial, including little kids."

When confronted with these findings, Delta offered a particular response. Delta, she noted, told reporters "that government air travel is often booked via third parties like travel agencies, they said airlines may not have advanced notice or or detail as to who may be flying and for what reason. Delta also, and we should have seen this coming. They pointed us back to that happy ABC News report about Liam and his dad being flown home from Dilley on a Delta flight. That's the one where the the pilots were so nice and they gave Liam his little wings."

In short, she added, "Delta was very happy to promote its involvement in Liam's homecoming, but not so much their involvement with sending him to prison."

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