Ramsey County sues DHS over ICE arrest of Hmong-American in St. Paul

Let's get started. Hey, good afternoon, everybody. My name is John Choi, uh, the Ramsey County attorney. And thank you for being here today. Um, uh, to just, uh, hear about, uh, the announcement that we have and offer ourselves up to questions. Standing next to me is a Sheriff Bob Fletcher. Uh, also with us today is a retired assistant, uh, prosecutor, uh, from our office a long time ago, Al Brazil, who's also, uh, volunteering to work, uh, help us with, um, the, uh, the work that we're doing in this office around responding to operation Metro surge and Mark Kazi, who is one of the attorneys working on this case. And then we have how win, uh, who is also, um, leading this case. And then, uh, Brett Bacon from our civil division, uh, who have all put an extraordinary amount of effort and time, uh, to get to where we are at today. And today, uh, last time I think we were here before all of you and the public was on April 13th, uh, when we announced that, uh, we had issued a Tui demand letter. And prior to that, the Sheriff's office as hell also had been asking, uh, the federal government for cooperation in the festive investigation of the case involving Chong Lee, Scott Tao, uh, United States citizen, uh, who was, um, and all of you have seen the video where he was, um, pulled out of his house, um, in Crocs and, uh, without the appropriate clothing and driven around for approximately, uh, more than an hour. Uh, so we today, uh, what has happened and transpired is, is that we have filed in federal court a civil action against, uh, the federal government, uh, specifically the department of Homeland Security and, uh, it's a director and our hope as a part of the civil action, uh, is exactly what we said, uh, when we stood before you here on April 13th, which is to compel the cooperation and the sharing of information so that we, uh, in Ramsey County can do, uh, very simply an investigation to get to the truth to evaluate whether or not Minnesota law has been broken and to uphold the rule of law, wherever the facts take us and what the law prescribes, uh, and to do that without fear or favor. And, uh, it's been frustrating because in normal times, uh, we have the cooperation between agencies, whether it's at the state level interagency or whether it's between state and federal, something like this has never really occurred. Until more recently where, um, the, um, requests, the lawful requests, the official requests of, um, local investigative agencies are being ignored. And so today is about, uh, announcing, uh, the, the federal lawsuit under the administrative procedures act and, um, and standing here, they answer whatever questions that you might have. So at this time, I'd like, um, how, when, who is leading, uh, the work in this case for our office to talk a little bit about, um, the, the complaint, maybe some of the procedural facts, uh, that got us to this place of why we felt like we had to commence a federal lawsuit, uh, in, uh, the district of Minnesota and, uh, the specific, uh, uh, relief or the injunctive relief that we are, uh, asking, uh, for a judge to, uh, intervene in. So how I'll turn it over to you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is how, when I'm the division director of our Ramsey County trials division, also the director of our appellate unit. Um, I think procedurally it's important to talk about how we got here and, uh, timelines do matter. So on January 18th, 2026, as many of you are already aware, that was when Mr. Tao was forcibly removed from his home and 10 degree, uh, cold weather in his underwear, um, half naked, uh, guns were drawn, uh, by federal officers who we, we, we certainly do believe they were federal agents. Uh, they took him out of his home. He was a us citizen. They took him into a car and essentially disappeared him for a good part of an hour. And so we do believe in good faith that we need to look into that. Uh, that was on January 18th, 2026. Then on February 24th, 2026 in conjunction with the Ramsey County Sheriff's office, working with an investigator and investigator sent a letter to the division chief of ice chief Howard Wiseman here at the local chapter asking for information. Um, because as John has stated in normal times, we do share information so we can seek justice. Uh, Howard, uh, Wiseman invited our Ramsey County Sheriff's office, um, investigator to meet with him in person. Uh, that meeting occurred on March 5th, 2026. Uh, when the investigator got there, he was only told essentially there was no authority to release any investigation, any facts or any information. Then we fast forward to March 20th of 2026 because we were at a dead end. If they're not willing to share information, we, as you know, entered a formal TUI demand letter, uh, seeking information with regard to the investigation, a TUI demand letter being many of you were here at the press conference, lays out all the federal law and regulations and procedures for us to do a formal request on how to get the necessary information that we need to ensure or make sure that crimes committed at the state level, um, uh, are essentially taken care of. And those people held accountable. If in fact a crime had occurred on April 28th, 2026 in response to our TUI demand letter, senior counsel Ryan Stubbs, uh, from ice and attorney from ice, responded to us saying ice is still in the process of evaluating your request. I am seeking a two week extension until May 15th, 2026, which should give us enough time to complete our response. Now we wanted to be good and patient justice partners. So we agreed to that request and we, uh, responded with an extension. Then that deadline came and went and we still had no more information. On May 15th, 2026 senior legal advisor Ryan Stubbs again, uh, contacted our office stating ice is still in the process of evaluating your requests. We will provide our response as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding. We replied that we believed that they had ample time to satisfy our request, our formal request, but still gave an extension to May 29th, 2026 we all stand before you today hearing nothing. We do not have any information. So those extensions have come and gone and that's led us to this situation where we do formally need to submit a formal lawsuit in accordance with the APA to get that information. And it's important that we do that because we aren't being curious just for the sake of curiousness. The people of Ramsey County, the 10th amendment with regard to our sovereignty demands and we understand that we have a right to seek justice and investigate crimes that occur in our jurisdiction. So today is a necessary and critical part of that. And it's going to lead us down the road to see what happened to seek justice if it's required. Thank you. If this was another state agency that had conducted themselves in this same way, we would be investigating in the same robust manner that we are attempting to now. In fact, I would hope that all of you in the fourth estate of America would be demanding that there be, there be a thorough investigation of what happened and we can't be tenuous about this because it's a federal agency. This isn't about which agency, it's about the victim and the victim here deserves some type of accountability. Yes, the victim was Mr. Tao's clearly a United States citizen. But regardless of that fact, dragging someone out of their house that's not wanted, doesn't have any warrants, hasn't committed a crime in the winter, throwing them in a squad car and driving them around. Isn't the America we want to live in. So there has to be some accountability and we have done our job as investigators. We have a, we have pictures and photographs of all of the agents that were involved from the scene, from social media and from other people that were there. We had license plates of the cars that were involved. We actually use the flock system to try to track those cars. Unfortunately they changed the plates. The different cars. So I don't think there's a question that there was a law broken. I mean at the minimum, this is conduct on becoming of a officer of, of the court and a maximum. It's some form of false imprisonment or kidnapping. It all depends on what the intent was, what the motive was, what they did during that hour. What were they trying to get out of the person? How long did it take them to figure out? They should, they would have known instantly because one of the people they were looking for wasn't actually, was already in custody. But clearly they wanted to try to get some more information. Our system of justice doesn't work that way. You don't get to drive people around terrorizing them on the drive, not knowing if where they're going. I mean you have to understand the time that we were in. Mr. Tao had no idea where he was going to end up. So we're here to represent Mr. Tao. That's our job. And we're, we're asking the federal government to help us. Now you saw what happened yesterday with the release of information to the BCA. I talked to Drew Evans this morning. There's a lot of hope out there that a Homeland Security is going to cooperate. I actually think there's some motion and some movement. Our lawsuit is toward DHS. The state actually sued DHS and the Department of Justice and finally got some results. I'm hoping it doesn't have to come to that. All we really need is the reports written by their officers. The reports will elucidate, I'm sure, exactly what happened and why it happened. So we hope the media agrees. Sir, pleasure. Uh, answer to kind of the first part of my question is what crimes? And so if, if it could be as much as kidnapping, is that something that's ever happened before where a federal agent, you know, who says that they were in the process of doing their job and you know, I know people refer to it as kidnapping or disappearing people. Has it ever gotten to that point where potentially they've been charged with kidnapping? Well, here's the problem. We don't have a statement from the federal officer. If they produced a document or report that indicated they thought a, B and C that would defend and condemn, you know, clear their name. Great. Send it to us because that will be a factor that the county attorney's office will consider, but we don't have it. And so not having it doesn't allow us to clear them either. Well, I mean, I think that's the part of what we're trying to get to. Right. And so we, I don't want to also, I think we're talking about a lot of like we're speculating on a number of things. What's really important is, is that we need to get to the truth and the truth can't be found without some level of cooperation about what happened. And as Sheriff Fletcher talked about, what's really important is like the, the motive of around what was transpiring in terms of what their official election was all about. And then of course the, those facts that we gather as a part of the investigative process we have to meet every element of the offense. So you had identified or you asked about kidnapping, false imprisonment. We don't charge people with crimes unless we feel like those elements of what would be the violation are met. And we believe that we can prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. And we take into account all of the various defenses that people would have. And then we make a determination, but we can't even get there because we have a challenge with respect to understanding who these officers are. Like Sheriff Fletcher said, we have some of the pictures, we know who these individuals are. We have seen some of the decals and the things that they had were wearing, but we don't, we need to understand who they are and what their operation was. Yes, we think they're federal agents. We think they're related to the, to ice. Um, we don't know their names. We haven't publicly posted their photographs nationwide. If anybody wants to tell us, but, and we're not intending to do that, but, uh, we believe that there were federal agents working under the ice surge photographs from the scene and some of the, some of them were wearing masks. Yes. Well, the reports are starting place and, um, under our practices here, everyone involved that was using any force or involved would be writing a report. Now we know that even though everybody's supposed to wear body cameras, we know ice has only got one per group now. So whether or not more than one person is writing a report, but whoever was in charge of that operation would write a report outlining why they were there, what they were doing. And if they were in the car with Mr. Tao, when they took him, they would write a report there or another officer with Mr. Tao would write a report. We don't think they had body cameras running while they were in the car. That would be very helpful. Um, but we don't think that that exists. So yes, we're looking for reports and after those reports are reviewed by us and the county attorney's office, then the question of next steps comes in and we may want to interview them. And there are several ways to interview them. One is a, you know, just come on in and talk to us. The other is through subpoena. And Karen, just one more thing too is as a part of the, the, the complaint that was filed today, there's a, there's an exhibits or a appendix to it, right there. You will find the initial to a demand letter that this office sent with regard to this investigation. And in that letter, there's a very specific list of things that we think would be helpful for us to, to be able to get to the truth. We don't believe there was, we don't believe there was, but we, we don't have adequate knowledge to make a determination. A lot of us have covered a county attorney, Mary Moriarty's press conference regarding, you know, if she kind of stated it, like, it seems like things were back to normal as far as the relationship with the federal partners and the theory and stuff like that. And this kind of shows that it's really not. Now with regard to this case and we followed the very specific steps that Hennepin County has done. The only difference here is that they commence their to a litigation in Washington, DC. We've chosen to venue the case here in the district of Minnesota. Well, I think procedurally we need to understand that. I think procedurally what happened over there is they followed the similar procedures that we were doing here. There was a request as normal. Hey, would you please share this information through our normal channels that we have denied. There was then the Tui demand letter, which is a formal request with regard to the Tui legal framework denied. Then they filed a civil lawsuit, much like we're doing now. Many, many weeks later was that cooperation in conjunction with what's happening now, right? You know, I don't want to speculate, but I will say that we can't ignore the fact that cooperation began to occur after a formal lawsuit was commenced. And certainly one of the things that we are hoping for is cooperation. You know, we are in this position right now because those channels have not worked. They've broken down and our requests have been ignored. Also, we've agreed to many extensions to which they've blown past, not, not like this, not in this specific instance. Go ahead. You go ahead. I mean, you've been talking to his attorney. You're probably, yeah, I mean, yeah, you know, yeah. You know, we've had conversations with his council. They're qualified, really good attorneys who are very much zealous advocates of Mr. Tao. I believe, you know, from his information to his attorneys, he's in good spirits, but no doubt this has been obviously havoc on his life. And frankly, any victim. And in this case, alleged victim until we have the probable cause until we see the reports and all that. So I'm going to use the word alleged when they suffer, an intrusion like this, an invasion into someone's home, a publicly embarrassment of being dragged out guns drawn, all of those things, then being taken away into a vehicle by masked and armed men. I can't imagine what that must feel like. So I, you know, on a personal note, I have no idea how he's feeling now. And as we understand trauma does go up and down and flows in ways that we can't anticipate. I don't think we should. Yeah. And I'm not going to comment on any other litigation that he might be involved in with his attorneys. I just want to say about where we're at. The justice system that we have here in America is two pronged. It's one to get accountability for the suspects that violated the law and get justice for the victim. The second prong of what we're doing and what the justice system is designed to do is to send a message to others that might want to do something similar, that you're going to be held accountable. We're not going to tolerate here, this here in Minnesota. And so in addition to getting justice for Mr. Tao, we do want to send a strong message that this isn't acceptable in Minnesota. Thank you.