A little boy in a blue hat with floppy white rabbit ears, staring helplessly while a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agent holds on to the five-year-old’s Spider-Man backpack. That troubling image of Liam Conejo Ramos went around the world. He and his father, Adrian, an Ecuadorean asylum seeker, were taken from their home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Dilley Immigration Processing Center, Texas, some 1,884km away by air.

Liam and Adrian were released last week after Judge Fred Biery granted their petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In a blistering 500-word judgment, Biery managed to mention the Magna Carta of 1215 (considered to be the first written document limiting the power of a king) and the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

The judge wrote that “33-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

The reference is to King George III, known in UK primary school textbooks for decades as “the mad king who lost America”.

Under his signature, Biery appended the photo of Liam, with the words, “Credit: Bystander” and two gospel references, Matthew 19:14 and John 11:35.

He did not write the verses in full. Even in a rapidly secularising America, many people, particularly those raised in a Protestant, Evangelical tradition, would........

© The Irish Times