British stone. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Federal immigration agents broke down a door at gunpoint at a U.S. citizen’s Minnesota home without a warrant, detained him and then took him out onto the street in subzero conditions wearing only his underwear, according to his family and video seen by The Associated Press.
ChongLy “Scott” Thao told The Associated Press that his daughter-in-law alerted him Sunday afternoon that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were banging on the door of his St. Paul residence. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in, pointed guns at the family and yelled at them, Thao recalled.
“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any search warrant; they just broke in.”
The influx of federal agents into the Twin Cities comes as immigration authorities face a backlash from residents and local leaders, including warrantless arrests, violent clashes with protesters and the shooting death of mother of three Renee Goode.
“ICE is not doing what they say they are going to do,” St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, who is Hmong American, said in a statement about Thao’s arrest. “They will not go after hardened criminals. They will go after anyone who stands in their path. That is unacceptable and un-American.”
The encounter was captured on video
Tao, who has been a U.S. citizen for decades, said that when he was detained, he asked his daughter-in-law to find his identification, but agents told him they didn’t want to see it.
Instead, Thao was handcuffed and wearing only sandals and underwear, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, as his 4-year-old grandson watched and cried.
The scene, captured on video, included people whistling, honking horns and neighbors screaming at more than a dozen gun-toting agents to leave Thao’s family alone.
Thao said agents drove him to “an isolated area” and dropped him off in freezing weather so they could photograph him. He said he feared they would beat him. He was asked for identification, but agents had previously blocked him from retrieving it.
Agents eventually realized he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, and after an hour or two, they took him home, Thao said. There, Thao said, they asked him to show his ID and then left without apologizing for detaining him or breaking down the door.
Homeland Security defends operation
The Department of Homeland Security described ICE’s operation at Thao’s home as a “targeted operation” to find two convicted sex offenders.
“The U.S. citizen was housed with two convicted sex offenders at the scene of the operation,” the Department of Homeland Security said. “The individual refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified. He matched the description of the target.”
Tao’s family said in a statement that they “firmly reject” DHS’s claims and “strongly object to DHS’s attempts to publicly justify this action with false and misleading claims.”
Thao told The Associated Press that only he, his son, daughter-in-law and grandson lived in the rental house. Neither they nor the owners are listed on the Minnesota sex offender registry. The closest sex offender living in this zip code is more than two blocks away.
The Department of Homeland Security later released the names and photos of two people it described as “violent illegal alien sex offenders” and sought detention in St. Paul. Thao said he had never met these people before and they did not live with him.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an earlier inquiry 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 on his way to work before going to detain his father. He said the car he was driving was borrowed from his cousin’s boyfriend, whose name matched that of one of the men Homeland Security was looking for. Chris Tao said he didn’t know his boyfriend’s last name.
Family flees Laos after helping U.S.
The family said they were particularly disturbed by ChongLy Thao’s treatment by the U.S. government because his mother, who had to flee Laos to the U.S. after the communists took over in the 1970s, put her life in danger because she supported U.S. covert operations in Laos.
Thao’s adoptive mother, Choua Thao, was a nurse who treated CIA-backed Hmong soldiers during the U.S. government’s “secret war” against the Communists from 1961 to 1975, according to the Hmong Nurses Association website.
Choua Thao died in late December, and her daughter-in-law, Louansee Moua, wrote on a GoFundMe page for the family that she “worked closely with U.S. personnel to treat countless civilians and U.S. soldiers.”
ChongLy Thao said he plans to file a civil rights lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and no longer feels safe sleeping in his home.
“I’m not safe at all,” Thao said. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.”
___
Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed.
___
Brooke is a corps member for 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 undercovered issues.