ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A Minnesota county is investigating the arrest of a Hmong American man by federal officers that was captured on video as a potential case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, officials announced Monday.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher said at a news conference they will pursue information from the Department of Homeland Security that they need for their investigation into the arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao in January. Ramsey County includes the state capital of St. Paul.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers bashed open the front door of Thao’s St. Paul home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him outside in just his underwear and a blanket in freezing conditions.
“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. There’s not a dispute over that,” Fletcher said. “There’s no dispute that he was taken out of his house, forcibly taken out of his home and driven around.”
He continued: “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?’”
DHS, which oversees ICE, has refused so far to cooperate with other state and local investigations into the killings by federal officers of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Choi said they’re trying to determine whether any crimes were committed that they could prosecute under state or federal law.
“This is not about, any type of predetermined agenda other than to seek the truth and to investigate the facts,” he said.
Agents eventually realized Thao was a longtime U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said in an interview with The Associated Press in January. They returned him to his home after a couple of hours.
Homeland Security later said ICE officers had been seeking two convicted sex offenders. But Thao told the AP he had never seen the two men before and that they did not live with him.
Videos captured the scene, which included people blowing whistles and horns, and neighbors screaming at more than a dozen gun-toting agents to leave Thao’s family alone.
The state and the chief prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, sued the Trump administration last month to gain access to evidence they say they need to independently investigate three shootings by federal officers in Minneapolis, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The lawsuit accuses the federal government of reneging on its promise to cooperate with state investigations after the surge of around 3,000 federal law enforcement officers into Minnesota.
Minnesota and Hennepin County have also appealed to the public to share information about federal officers’ potentially illegal activities, given the refusal by federal authorities to provide evidence.
The Trump administration has suggested Minnesota officials don’t have jurisdiction to investigate those cases. State and county prosecutors say they need to conduct their own inquiries because they don’t trust the federal government.
The Justice Department in January said it was opening a federal civil rights investigation into Pretti’s killing, and two officers have been placed on leave, but the agency said a similar federal probe was not warranted in Good’s death.
Karnowski reported from Minneapolis.
