Officials in Minnesota are investigating the arrest of a U.S. citizen by federal immigration officers who broke into his home at gunpoint and dragged him outside into freezing conditions while he was wearing only boxer shorts and Crocs sandals.
The Jan. 18 arrest of 56-year-old ChongLy “Scott” Thao is being reviewed as a potential case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, officials in Ramsey County said Monday.
Video footage captured Immigration and Customs Enforcement breaking down Thao’s home in St. Paul during Donald Trump’s surge of immigration agents into the state. There was “no legitimate reason” for federal agents to “forcibly” enter his home, and his arrest was not supported by any probable cause, according to Ramsey County Attorney John Choi.
Thao was “taken out in freezing weather in his Crocs and a pair of shorts” and detained for more than an hour, Choi told reporters Monday.
“There are many facts we don’t know yet, but there’s one that we do know, and that is that Mr. Thao is and has been an American citizen,” said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher. “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?”
Officials have requested information from the Department of Homeland Security, including the names of the agents who arrested Thao.
A spokesperson for DHS told The Independent that “ICE does not ‘kidnap’ people” and called the investigation a “political stunt.”
ICE agents were seen banging on his door on a Sunday afternoon before forcing their way inside and yelling at Thao, who is Hmong-American, and his family, he told the Associated Press.
“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant; they just broke down the door.”
St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, who is also Hmong-American, said in the wake of his arrest that “ICE is not doing what they say they’re doing.”
“They’re not going after hardened criminals,” she said in a statement at the time. “They’re going after anyone and everyone in their path. It is unacceptable and un-American.”
Agents were seeking two convicted sex offenders, Homeland Security said at the time. The agency accused Thao of “living with” them.
“DHS law enforcement officers were executing a warrant,” a spokesperson said Monday. “Through surveillance and intelligence information, law enforcement concluded sexual predator targets had ties to the property. The U.S. citizen was at [sic] house when the warrant was served. The individual refused to be fingerprinted or facially ID’d. 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.”
A statement from Thao’s family “categorically disputes” the agency’s account and “strongly objects to DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this conduct with false and misleading claims.”
Thao, his son, daughter-in-law and grandson are the only people living at the rental property, and neither they nor the property’s owner are listed in the Minnesota sex offender registry, according to the family. The nearest sex offender listed as living in the ZIP code is more than two blocks away.
One of the targets was Lue Moua, who was already in prison, according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Moua had been imprisoned on a kidnapping charge since 2024 and was scheduled for release in January 2027. He was being held on an ICE detainer, and ICE would have known where he was being held, according to state prison officials.
But officers never gave Thao a chance to prove his identity and was instead led out of his home in handcuffs wearing only sandals and underwear with a blanket draped around his shoulders.
He was then driven “to the middle of nowhere” and forced out of the car in the frigid weather so agents could photograph him, according to Thao.
Officers brought him home roughly two hours later, where he then showed them his ID, Thao told the Associated Press. They never apologized for detaining him or breaking his door, he said.
Monday’s announcement marks the latest attempt from local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to investigate Trump’s Operation Metro Surge, derided as a weeks-long “occupation” and federal “siege” that swept up thousands of people in an immigration enforcement dragnet.
ICE and Border Patrol agents killed three people in Minneapolis — Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti — within the month of January alone. But more than two months later, the status of those investigations remains unclear.
A lawsuit filed by Minnesota officials last month calls on a federal judge to force the Trump administration to share evidence it collected after the shootings, alleging that Homeland Security and federal law enforcement agencies have stonewalled attempts for information about incidents that triggered national demonstrations against the president’s mass deportation efforts.
In the cases of Good and Pretti, both 37-year-old U.S. citizens, Homeland Security officials insisted that both protesters posed a direct threat to law enforcement officers when they were fatally shot.
A separate lawsuit from Minnesota officials urged a court to prevent DHS from destroying or altering any evidence from the scene of Pretti’s killing.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has also demanded evidence in the killings of Pretti and Good, and the state has launched a website to collect evidence from the public.
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