ICE broke into Minnesota home, forced barely clothed man outside into snow
SAINT PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota man told Reuters on Monday he felt fear, shame and desperation a day after ICE officers broke down his door with guns drawn, handcuffed him and forced him outside into the snow wearing shorts and Crocs. ChongLy Thao, 56, a naturalized U.S. citizen who goes by the name Scott, was returned home later on Sunday without explanation or apology, he said.
“I was praying. I was like, God, please help me, I didn’t do anything wrong. Why do they do this to me? Without my clothes on,” Thao, a Hmong man born in Laos, told Reuters from his home on Monday, while neighbors were at work fixing the broken door.
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Pictures of the incident showing Thao barely clothed and covered in a blanket taken by a Reuters photographer and bystanders spread on social media, further fueling concern that federal law enforcement officers were exceeding their authority as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, which has seen some 3,000 officers deployed in the Minneapolis area.
A statement published by the family called the incident “unnecessary, degrading, and deeply traumatizing.” The highest temperature in Saint Paul on Sunday was 14 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 10 degrees Celsius).
The Department of Homeland Security said officers were investigating two convicted sex offenders at the address and that a U.S. citizen living there refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified, so he was detained.
“He matched the description of the targets. As with any law enforcement agency, it is standard protocol to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for safety of the public and law enforcement,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
DHS published wanted posters for two men targeted in the investigation who were still at large, describing each as a “criminal illegal alien” from Laos who is subject to deportation orders. One of the men in the wanted posters previously lived at the house but moved out, according to relatives close to the situation, who described him as the ex-husband of a member of the Thao family.
Saint Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, who is a family friend of Thao, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that DHS said it was looking for sex offenders, but that the family had lived in that house for two years “and the person they are looking for does not live there anymore.”
“I am livid at what happened, but livid to find out their justification of what it is that they did,” Her said in an interview with the newspaper.
Her, who took office earlier this month, is the first woman and first person of Hmong descent to serve as Saint Paul mayor. A U.S. District Judge in Minnesota on Friday issued an injunction blocking the Trump administration from some aggressive tactics that she said would “chill” an ordinary citizen from engaging in constitutionally protected protest.
