ICE is facing a criminal probe after a U.S. citizen was dragged semi-naked out of his home by its agents.
As the Daily Beast reported in January, ChongLy “Scott” Thao, 56—a Hmong American grandfather born in Laos who became a U.S. citizen in 1991—was hauled at gunpoint from his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, by ICE agents.
He was forced to endure 14°F temperatures, wearing only his boxer shorts and Crocs, using a blanket his four-year-old grandson had been sleeping under to protect himself from the snow.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher announced Monday they are treating the January 18 arrest as a potential case of kidnapping, burglary, and false imprisonment—and have set an April 30 deadline for DHS to produce evidence, after which they say they could pursue the matter through litigation or by empaneling a grand jury.
“Is that good law enforcement, to take an American citizen out of their home and drive them around aimlessly, trying to determine what they can tell them?” Fletcher asked at the news conference.
ICE forced entry into Thao’s home at gunpoint, with no judicial warrant—as far as investigators have so far been able to establish—while seeking two men with sex offense convictions and deportation orders, it was reported at the time.
Thao was fingerprinted, held for several hours, and released with neither charges filed nor any account given of why he had been detained. The Minnesota Department of Corrections later confirmed that one of the two targets was still serving a prison sentence at the time of the raid.
ICE dismissed the probe as “nothing but a political stunt to demonize ICE law enforcement,” the Associated Press reported.
Hao Nguyen, director of the County Attorney’s trial division, said officials wrote to DHS, ICE, and local federal prosecutors on March 20 outlining what they are seeking—including the identity of every agent on duty that day and their chain of command, along with body camera footage, internal communications, and any accounts taken from witnesses.
The Trump administration has maintained that state authorities lack jurisdiction over federal law enforcement. Fletcher flatly rejected that position. “There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal agents,” he said. “Seizing a person out of their home who’s an American citizen, they’re not immune from that.”
DHS has refused to cooperate with county and state-level probes into the January killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal officers during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Thao had nothing to say when approached about Monday’s news, according to AP.
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS and ICE for comment.
