US citizen says ICE removed him from his home after warrantless search
By JACK BROOK, Associated Press/Report for America
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Federal immigration agents forced a door and arrested a U.S. citizen in his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then took him down the street in his underwear in freezing conditions, according to his family and videos reviewed by The Associated Press.
ChongLy “Scott” Thao told the AP that his daughter-in-law woke him from a nap Sunday afternoon and said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were knocking on the door of his St. Paul residence. He told her not to open it. Masked officers then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family and shouted at them, Thao recalled.
“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t present any warrant, they just broke down the door.”
Amid a massive influx of federal agents into the Twin Cities, immigration authorities are facing backlash from residents and local leaders over warrantless arrests, aggressive clashes with protesters and the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a mother of three.
“ICE is not doing what it says it is doing,” St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, a Hmong American, said in a statement about Thao’s arrest. “They don’t go after hardened criminals. They go after everyone in their path. It’s unacceptable and un-American.”
Filmed meeting
Thao, who has been a U.S. citizen for decades, said that during his arrest he asked his daughter-in-law to find his identification papers, but the agents told him they did not want to see them.
Instead, as his 4-year-old grandson watched and cried, Thao was led away in handcuffs, wearing only sandals and underwear, with just a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
Videos captured the scene, in which people whistled and honked their horns and neighbors shouted at more than a dozen armed officers to leave Thao’s family alone.
Thao said officers drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and made him get out of the car in freezing weather so they could photograph him. He said he feared they would beat him. He was asked for his ID card, which officers had previously prevented him from collecting.
Agents eventually realized he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said, and an hour or two later took him home. There, they made him show his ID, then left without apologizing for arresting him or breaking down his door, Thao said.
DHS defends its operation
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security described the ICE operation at Thao’s home as a “targeted operation” aimed at searching for two convicted sex offenders.
“The U.S. citizen is living 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 “categorically dispute” DHS’s account and “strongly oppose DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this conduct with false and misleading allegations.”
Thao told the AP that only he, his son, his daughter-in-law and his grandson lived in the rental house. Neither they nor the owner of the property are listed on the Minnesota sex offender registry. The closest sex offender listed as living in the zip code is more than two blocks away.
DHS did not respond to a request from The Associated Press asking for the identities of the “two convicted sex offenders” or why the agency believed they were present at Thao’s home.
Thao’s son, Chris Thao, said ICE agents stopped him while 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. Court records show the boyfriend shares the first name of another Asian man who was convicted of a sex offense. Chris Thao said that the two people are not the same.
Family fled Laos after helping the United States
The family said they were particularly distressed by the U.S. government’s treatment of ChongLy Thao because her mother had to flee Laos for the United States when the communists took power in the 1970s because she had supported U.S. 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 during the U.S. government’s 1961-1975 “secret war” against the communists, according to the Hmong Nurses Association website.
Choua Thao, who died in late December, “cared for 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 lawsuit against DHS and no longer feels safe sleeping at home.
“I don’t feel safe at all,” Thao said. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.”
Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed.
Brook 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 under-reported issues.
