County investigating federal agents for possible kidnapping charges in Hmong man's detainment in St. Paul

Louis Krauss, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Apr 13, 2026

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MINNEAPOLIS — The Ramsey County Attorney and sheriff announced Monday that they are investigating federal agents for possible criminal charges, including kidnapping, after they pulled a St. Paul man out of his home in January into below-zero windchill wearing nothing but boxers and Crocs.

On Jan. 18, agents broke open the door for the home of 56-year-old U.S. citizen ChongLy Scott Thao, handcuffed him, and removed him. The agents may have committed crimes including kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, said County Attorney John Choi and Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.

Speaking at a news conference April 13, Choi said his office is in the active investigation stage of two incidents involving federal agents, and the preliminary stage of three others in Ramsey County.

Choi said this process of investigating the acts of federal agents has been “novel territory.” When a lead investigator assigned to Thao’s case sought information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), they were denied, Choi said.

“We’re not going to let it go, because we owe it to the people of our community and our state to seek the truth, to gather those facts,” Choi said. “If people are in our way, then we need to figure out ways to get someone to order that they are in our way and they need to step aside or cooperate.”

After he was placed in an SUV, Thao was driven around and questioned in the agents’ custody for about an hour before he was returned home, according to Choi. There was “no indication the agents had a warrant for entry or arrest” according to the release.

The incident in St. Paul stoked outrage about ICE’s tactics during the massive Operation Metro Surge, which brought as many as 4,000 additional agents to Minnesota. Fletcher said it’s his understanding that the federal agents were looking for a particular sex offender and had a specific name, but that the offender was already in custody.

In response to the announcement, an ICE spokesperson said in an email that the agency “does not ‘kidnap people’” and called it a “political stunt to demonize” ICE officers. The spokesperson added that agents were serving a warrant that day.

“Through surveillance and intelligence information, law enforcement concluded sexual predator targets had ties to the property,” the spokesperson said.

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, who is a family friend of Thao, said in January that Thao’s family had lived in the house for two years “and the person they are looking for does not live there anymore.”

On March 23, in response to being denied by ICE for information in Thao’s detainment, the County Attorney’s Office filed what’s known as a “Touhy demand,” part of the formal process for obtaining records and evidence from federal agencies. The office gave the federal government until April 30 to provide the information.

Some of the information requested that has not been given includes federal police reports, the identities of agents working in the county that day and month, who they reported to, and what other evidence they might have collected, said Hao Nguyen, the director of the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office Trial Division.

“We know there are reports, there’s just no way that there aren’t,” Nguyen said Monday.

Touhy letters were filed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office as well earlier this year in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but did not get a response. That led to a lawsuit from the state and Moriarty’s office to demand evidence in those cases.

Fletcher was critical of the decision to detain Thao, saying he’s looked at the photographs of the specific person or people agents were looking for and that they had “no resemblance outside of the fact that they’re Asian.” He was additionally critical of the shorter amount of training federal agents receive compared to Minnesota officers, and that Thao was detained despite the agents’ access to facial or fingerprint scanning technology.

“I’ve never seen tactics like were employed here in my 47 years” in law enforcement, Fletcher said.

In the ICE email, the spokesperson said that Thao “refused to be fingerprinted or facially ID’d” when agents entered the house.

Choi and Fletcher have encouraged residents who witnessed or experienced similar instances of potentially unlawful activities by agents to call 911 or their local agency’s non-emergency number and report it.

Going forward, Choi said there would be more press conferences on the other active investigations when it’s appropriate.

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(Kim Hyatt of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this report.)