Rachel Maddow

In the case of little five-year-old Liam, the public pressure worked in a way.

Instead of being stuck in Dilley for weeks or months or longer, things moved faster for him and his family.

Liam was taken off the street in Minneapolis, flown across the country, imprisoned, then freed from the prison and flown back home, all in less than two weeks.

It went fast because of the national uproar.

But 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 the men and women in shackles go up those tarmac stairs, Nick said he'd never once seen a kid boarding one of those flights.

He'd never seen a little kid like a five-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?

We know they sent this little boy to prison in Texas.

How did he get there?

How did he get from standing in his bunny hat and 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 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.