SF. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Federal immigration agents opened a door and detained a U.S. citizen in his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him down the street in his underwear in subfreezing conditions, according to his family and videos reviewed by The Associated Press.
ChongLy “Scott” Thao told the AP that his daughter-in-law alerted him Sunday afternoon that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were knocking on the door of his residence in St. Paul. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled.
“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t present any warrant, they just broke down the door.”
Amid a massive surge of federal agents into the Twin Cities, immigration authorities are facing backlash from residents and local leaders over warrantless arrests, violent clashes with protesters and the fatal shooting of mother of three Renee Good.
“ICE is not doing what they say they are doing,” said the mayor of St. Paul Kaohly Her, a Hmong American, in a statement about Thao’s arrest. “They’re not going after hardened criminals. They’re going after anyone and everyone in their path. It’s unacceptable and un-American.”
The meeting is filmed
Thao, who has been a U.S. citizen for decades, said that while being detained, he asked his daughter-in-law to find his ID, but the agents told him they didn’t want to see it.
Instead, as his 4-year-old grandson watched and cried, Thao was led outside in handcuffs wearing only sandals and underwear, with only a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
Videos captured the scene, which included people blowing whistles and horns and neighbors yelling at the more than a dozen gun-wielding officers to leave Thao’s family alone.
Thao said the agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and made him get out of the car in the cold so they could photograph him. He said he was afraid they would beat him. He was asked for his ID, which agents had previously prevented him from retrieving.
Eventually, agents realized he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said, and an hour or two later, they brought him back to his home. There they made him show his ID and then he left without apologizing for holding him back or breaking down his door, Thao said.
Homeland Security is defending the operation
The US Department of Homeland Security described the ICE raid on Thao’s home as a “targeted operation” in search of two convicted sex offenders.
“The US citizen resides with these two convicted sex offenders at the site of the operation,” DHS said. “The individual refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified. He matched the description of the targets.”
Thao’s family said in a statement that they “strongly dispute” DHS’s account and “strongly oppose DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this conduct with false and misleading claims.”
Thao told the AP that only he, his son and daughter-in-law, and his grandson live in the rented house. Neither they nor the property owner are on the Minnesota sex offender registry. The nearest sex offender listed as living in the zip code is more than two blocks away.
DHS later released the names and photos of two people it described as “violent illegal alien sex offenders” it was seeking to apprehend in St. Paul. Thao said he had never seen these men before and that they did not live with him.
DHS did not respond to an earlier request from The Associated Press asking why the agency believed they were present at Thao’s home.
Thao’s son, Chris Thao, said ICE agents stopped him as he was driving to work before going to arrest his father. He said he was driving a car he borrowed from his cousin’s boyfriend, whose first name matched that of one of the men he told DHS was looking for. Chris Thao said he did not know the boyfriend’s last name.
The family fled Laos after helping the US
The family said they were particularly upset about ChongLy Thao’s treatment at the hands of the US government because his mother had to flee to the US from Laos when the communists took over in the 1970s because she had supported US covert operations in the country and her life was in danger.
Thao’s adoptive mother, Choua Thao, was a nurse who treated CIA-backed Hmong soldiers in the US government’s 1961 to 1975 “Secret War” against the Communists, according to the Hmong Nurses Association website.
Choua Thao, who died in late December, “treated countless American civilians and soldiers, working closely with American personnel,” her daughter-in-law Louansee Moua wrote on a GoFundMe page for the family.
ChongLy Thao says he plans to file a civil rights lawsuit against DHS and that he no longer feels safe sleeping in his home.
“I don’t feel safe at all,” Thao said. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.”
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Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed.
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Brook is a member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues.