A Minnesota man was taken from his home in his underwear by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents while they were looking for two alleged sex offenders believed to be staying there.
Chongli “Scott” Tao, who has no criminal history, was napping when his daughter-in-law alerted him about the agents knocking at their door in St. Paul, as reported by the Associated Press.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that the ICE operation was a “targeted effort” to locate “two convicted sex offenders.”
According to DHS, the man they detained “refused fingerprinting and facial recognition” and matched the description of one of their targets.
However, Tao insisted to the AP that only his immediate family—his son, daughter-in-law, and their 4-year-old grandson—lived in the rental home, and neither they nor the property owner are listed on Minnesota’s sex offender registry.
This misunderstanding could have arisen from an earlier incident involving Tao’s son, Chris, who was stopped by ICE that same day while driving a borrowed car. The vehicle belonged to someone with a similar name to a convicted sex offender.
Tao reported that federal agents forcibly entered his home without showing a warrant. He described how masked officials with guns came in, and when he asked his stepdaughter to retrieve his ID, they were not interested in seeing it.
He was handcuffed and taken outside in the freezing cold, wearing only sandals and underwear, with a blanket draped over his shoulders.
After his detention, he said he was taken to a “secluded area” where agents snapped photos of him in the bitter cold. Once they confirmed he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, he was returned to his home about two hours later and asked for identification.
Tao has lived in the U.S. since the 1970s, and his mother, Choa Thao, was a nurse in Laos who treated CIA soldiers before fleeing to the United States when the communists took over.
Now, he plans to pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the DHS, expressing that he feels unsafe at home. “It’s not safe at all. What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything,” Tao lamented.
His family has expressed their strong disagreement with what they consider “false and misleading claims” from DHS.
DHS has not responded to requests for comment regarding the incident.
