Minnesota Prosecutors Probe ICE’s Warrantless Arrest of U.S. Citizen as Possible Kidnapping

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher announced an investigation into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Jan. 18 arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao in St. Paul, Minn., saying the episode may amount to kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment. Local officials say ICE agents battered down Thao’s front door at gunpoint without a warrant, removed the Hmong American man from his home in his underwear and a blanket in freezing weather, and drove him around for hours; they emphasize that Thao has long been a U.S. citizen with no criminal record and that ICE later acknowledged he was not its target. DHS has so far declined to provide reports or personnel information requested on March 20; ICE has denied that it “kidnaps” people and dismissed the inquiry as a “political stunt,” asserting it had been seeking convicted sex offenders with ties to the property, a claim the Minnesota Department of Corrections later undercut by saying one of those people was still in prison at the time of the raid.

The case is resonating against broader patterns and community context: Minnesota is home to the nation’s largest Hmong population—roughly 105,000 people, about 1.8% of the state’s residents—and Hmong Americans have long cited vulnerability to mistaken or heavy-handed enforcement stemming from the community’s refugee history. From 2020 to 2026 there have been multiple documented instances of U.S. citizens being wrongly detained by ICE, and civil-rights advocates and lawyers have increasingly demanded investigations and accountability in such cases. Social media amplified immediate public outrage, with posts recounting Thao’s account of fear and humiliation, family statements disputing DHS’s version of events, and commentators calling for tougher oversight of immigration enforcement.

Reporting has shifted in the weeks after the raid: initial official statements from ICE framed the operation as a targeted enforcement action against sex-offender suspects and rejected accusations of wrongdoing; subsequent coverage driven by local prosecutors’ public announcement and follow-up reporting (including PBS and outlets that relayed Thao’s firsthand account) has moved the story toward scrutiny of possible criminal conduct by federal agents and into a formal local criminal probe. The narrative change was propelled by the prosecutors’ disclosure of alleged warrantless forced entry, the DOC’s correction about the incarceration status of one purported target, and DHS’s refusal to cooperate with local requests for documentation—facts that have reframed the incident from an enforcement error into a potential law-enforcement crime under state law.