St. Paul mayor Kaohly Her ‘livid’ after ICE wrongly targets family friend, escorts him undressed into cold

The windchill was below-zero when ChongLy Scott Thao, 57 — wearing only boxers and Crocs, with a blanket draped over his shoulders — was handcuffed and ushered outside by federal agents agents who broke open his door.

The Jan. 18 incident in St. Paul stoked fresh outrage about ICE’s tactics as its agents spread across Minnesota. Thao is a U.S. citizen with no known criminal record in Minnesota.

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, who is a family friend of Thao, called the aggressive actions of federal immigration enforcement agents unjustifiable and said she’s livid about what happened.

According to an online fundraiser started by sister-in-law Louansee Moua, agents pointed guns at the family while Thao’s 5-year-old grandson was napping on the sofa and “woke up crying in fear, witnessing armed officers storm his home.”

“He was placed into a SUV, and driven around for nearly an hour while being questioned,“ Moua wrote in the fundraiser post. ”Only after fingerprinting and running his information did ICE confirm what should have been known from the start — he is a U.S. citizen and had NO criminal record. He was dropped back at home with no apology and no explanation."

According to publicly available court records, Thao does not have a criminal history in Minnesota.

Her said that she learned what ICE had to say about the incident in a response the Department of Homeland Security provided FOX 9. Her added that DHS said it was looking for sex offenders, but the mayor said 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.

“To somehow group those individuals with this family is completely irresponsible to justify their actions. There is nothing that they did in that home that is justifiable,” she said. “This is an American citizen who has no criminal record, who was sleeping in his own house, that they broke a door down and put guns to his daughter-in-law’s head.”

His daughter-in-law grabbed a blanket and threw it over Thao “as they’re dragging him out the door,” Her said. “And had that not happened, he would have been dragged out there in those shorts, in the cold, in the Minnesota winter.”

She said Thao’s mother was friends with her mother-in-law in Laos and that the families go back decades. “These are people who were looked at as my own uncles as I was growing up and it is unbelievable to me,” Her said.

“It’s devastating to watch. And I am not outraged because these are people personal to me. This is happening across our city, across our state,” she said. “This is happening to people, whether we know them or not. The federal government, ICE is not doing what it is that they say they’re doing. They’re not going after hardened criminals. They’re going after anyone and everyone in their path. It is unacceptable. That is un-American.”

Since the incident, Moua said, Thao’s health and emotional well-being have declined. They are fundraising to cover therapy and legal fees as the family filed complaints with the ACLU of Minnesota and Office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.