Ramsey County officials are investigating whether to charge federal immigration agents with kidnapping and false imprisonment following the arrest of a Hmong American man in January during the federal government’s months-long immigration enforcement operation earlier this year.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said during a news conference Monday there are two active investigations into the conduct of federal agents during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign, and they are seeking more information from the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with the probes.
One of the investigations is into an incident involving ChongLy Scott Thao, a St. Paul resident and U.S. citizen who was dragged out of his home by federal agents into freezing temperatures while only wearing shorts, sandals and a baby blanket draped over his shoulders.
“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,” Fletcher told reporters. “You can ask yourself as you look at those pictures ‘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 you?”
Choi said the second investigation is being conducted by the St. Paul Police Department but declined to provide further details.
Thao’s home was raided after Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents said he matched the description of one of their targets. That man was later found to be in a state prison at the time of the operation.
In a statement Monday, ICE said its agents were executing a search warrant and that one of their targets, allegedly a sexual predator, had a connection to Thao’s home. They said Thao was at the house when the warrant was served and refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified.
“As with any law enforcement agency, it is standard protocol to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for [the] safety of the public and law enforcement,” the statement said.
In January, days after Alex Pretti’s killing by immigration agents in Minneapolis, Choi said his office had opened criminal investigations into federal agents over alleged incidents of false imprisonment and assault in Ramsey County. Since then, Choi said a number of victims came forward and shared their experiences but his office has been deferring to them on whether they want to move forward with pursuing criminal investigations.
“As victims have come forward, we work with them getting them connected to services, as well as making sure that the victims … want us to move forward,” Choi said. “In many instances, we’re talking about people who may not have documented status or may be vulnerable in other ways.”
In addition to the two active investigations, county officials are working toward three other “preliminary” investigations where evidence has been gathered but officials are waiting for the victims’ consent to move forward.
“When someone breaches those limits of authority, there are consequences and there are checks and balances,” Fletcher said, denouncing earlier claims by Trump administration officials that federal immigration agents have “absolute” immunity. “When citizens call us and say ‘Hey our rights have been abused,’ we have an obligation to follow up and find out what happened.”
Both Choi and Fletcher said the federal government has not cooperated with their requests for information, which have included a letter from the Sheriff’s Office to federal officials in February and a meeting between investigators and federal officials early last month.
Hao Nguyen, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office’s trial division director, said the office filed what’s called a Touhy demand, or a formal request for information, from the Department of Homeland Security on March 23. The request asks for reports or logs from the federal officers who detained Thao, the names of federal agents working that day and who they reported to, as well as witness interviews and any digital and video recordings.
Should federal officials ignore the demand’s deadline, which is April 30, Choi said his office may sue or impanel a grand jury to compel the federal government to share evidence. Mary Moriarty, Choi’s counterpart in Hennepin County, filed a lawsuit late last month in a similar effort to get evidence from the federal government in the killings of Pretti and Renee Good.
“I want to make it very clear that we are not going to let this go,” Choi said. “If there’s fraud or concealment done by the actors that make it difficult for us to get to the truth, then we will use every legal argument that we have to make sure that we will find out what happened and find out the truth.”
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