Not Even U.S. Citizens Are Safe from ICE!

This week, ICE agents broke into a family home without a warrant, and kidnapped an elderly U.S. citizen without allowing him to produce ID.  Chongly "Scott" Thao spoke of his terror after the agents broke through the door of his home while they were singing karaoke and hauled him out semi-naked into the snow at gunpoint in front of his grandchildren.

ChongLy “Scott” Thao said that his daughter-in-law woke him up from a nap and said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were banging at the door of his residence in St. Paul. Masked agents then forced their way in and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them, Thao recalled. “I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant; they just broke down the door.” Thao, who has been a U.S. citizen for decades, said that as he was being detained he asked his daughter-in-law to find his identification but the agents told him they didn’t want to see it.

The agents then dragged the 56-year-old U.S. citizen, who was wearing only boxer shorts and crocs, into the snowy street as temperatures hovered around 14 degrees, as he pleaded with them that he was an American.  Thao, an American born in Laos, came to the U.S. with his parents at the age of 4 and became a U.S. citizen in 1991. During the ICE raid, Thao told Reuters he used a blanket from his 4-year-old grandson's bed to cover his bare torso.  “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 later told a local news outlet as his friends tried to repair the broken door. 

Thao said agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and made him get out of the car in the frigid weather so they could photograph him. He said he feared they would beat him.  Only then was Thao asked for his ID, which agents earlier prevented him from retrieving.  Agents eventually realized that he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said, and an hour or two later, they brought him back to his house. There they made him show his ID and then left without apologizing for detaining him or breaking his door, Thao said.  He described feeling “fear, shame, and desperation” over the incident. A statement from his family called the treatment “unnecessary, degrading, and deeply traumatizing.”

Thao’s experience has shattered the idea that citizenship would shield his family from such scenes. “We came here for a purpose, right? To have a bright future. To have a safe place to live… If this is going to turn out to be America, what are we doing here? Why are we here?” he added.

The Department of Homeland Security insisted agents were at the property looking for two convicted sex offenders with deportation orders, and said a U.S. citizen at the address who “refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified” was detained because he matched their description.  Thao’s family said in a statement that it “categorically disputes” the DHS account and “strongly objects to DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this conduct with false and misleading claims.”

Thao told reporters that only he, his son and daughter-in-law and his grandson live at the rental home. Neither they nor the property’s owner are listed in the Minnesota sex offender registry. The nearest sex offender listed as living in the zip code is more than two blocks away. 

ChongLy Thao says he’s planning to file a civil rights lawsuit against DHS and no longer feels secure to sleep in his home.  “I don’t feel safe at all,” Thao said. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.”