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 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.

Thao told Reuters that he was singing karaoke when there was a loud noise as agents broke down his door with guns drawn. Thao, who also goes by Scott, said he and his family hid in a bedroom and he was trying to find his ID before officers took him out of the house.

“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 told Reuters. Thao immigrated to the United States from Laos in 1974 and became a citizen in 1991.

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."

Her said that she learned what ICE had to say about the incident in a response the Department of Homeland Security provided to 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.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the Minnesota Star Tribune’s inquiry about the incident.

“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.”

“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.”

The situation is even more painful given Thao’s family history, Moua said. During the Laotian civil war, his birth mother was unable to care for him so a nurse, Choua Thao, raised him in Merced, Calif., where he became a naturalized citizen.

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.