US citizen says Immigration and Customs Enforcement forced open the door of his Minnesota home and took him out in his underwear after a warrantless search.

street. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Federal immigration agents forced open a door and detained a U.S. citizen in his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant, then took him out into the streets in his underwear in frigid conditions, according to his family and videos reviewed by The Associated Press.

Chongli “Scott” Thao told the AP that his daughter-in-law woke him from a nap Sunday afternoon and said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were knocking on the door of his residence in St. Paul. He told her not to open it. Masked agents then forced their way in, pointed guns at the family and shouted at them, Thao recalls.

“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant, they just broke down the door.”

Amid a massive wave of federal agents in the Twin Cities, immigration authorities are facing a backlash from residents and local leaders over warrantless arrests, violent clashes with protesters and the fatal shooting of mother-of-three Renee Judd.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not doing what they say they are doing,” St. Paul Mayor Kaohle Herr, who is Hmong American, said in a statement about Thao’s arrest. “They are not going after hardened criminals. They are going after anyone and everyone in their path. This is unacceptable and un-American.”

The encounter was captured on video

Thao, a US citizen for decades, said that while in detention he asked his daughter-in-law to find his identification but agents told him they did not want to see her.

Instead, as his 4-year-old grandson watched and cried, Thao was led out in handcuffs wearing only sandals and underwear with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

Videos captured the scene, which included people honking whistles and horns, and neighbors yelling at more than a dozen armed agents to leave Thao’s family alone.

Thao said the agents took him “to an unknown location” and forced him out of the car in the cold weather so they could photograph him. He said he was afraid they would beat him. He was asked for his ID, but security had previously prevented him from retrieving it.

Agents eventually realized he was a US citizen with no criminal record, and after an hour or two they sent him home, Thao said. There, Thao said, they forced him to show his ID and then left without apologizing for detaining him or breaking down his door.

DHS defends the operation

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security described the ICE operation at Thao’s home as a “targeted operation” searching for two convicted sex offenders.

The Department of Homeland Security said: “The American citizen lives with these two accused sex offenders at the site of the operation.” “The subject refused to be fingerprinted or have his face identified. He matched the description of the targets.”

He watches: The Twin Cities are on edge as ICE raids spark fear and protests

Thao’s family said in a statement that they “categorically oppose” the DHS account and “strongly object to DHS’s attempt to publicly justify this behavior with false and misleading claims.”

Thao told the AP that only he, his son, daughter-in-law and grandson lived in the rented house. Neither they nor the property owner are listed on the Minnesota sex offender registry. The closest sex offender listed as living in the zip code is more than two blocks away.

DHS did not respond to a request from the Associated Press to identify the “two convicted sex offenders” or why the agency believed they were present at Thao’s home.

Thao’s son, Chris Thao, said ICE agents stopped him while he was driving to work before they went to detain his father. He said he was driving a car he borrowed from his cousin’s friend. Court records show the friend has the first name of another Asian man who was convicted of a sex crime. Chris Thao said the two people are not the same.

The family fled Laos after US assistance

The family said they were particularly disturbed by Chung Li Thao’s treatment at the hands of the US government because his mother had to flee to the US from Laos when the communists took power in the 1970s since she supported US covert operations in the country and her life was in danger.

Thao’s adoptive mother, Chua Thao, was a nurse who treated CIA-backed Hmong soldiers in the U.S. government’s “secret war” from 1961 to 1975 against the Communists, according to the Hmong Nurses Association’s website.

Chua Thao, who died in late December, “treated countless American civilians and soldiers, and worked closely with American personnel,” her daughter-in-law, Luansi Mua, wrote on a GoFundMe page dedicated to the family.

ChongLy Thao says he plans to file a civil rights lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and no longer feels safe sleeping in his home.

“I don’t feel safe at all,” Thao said. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything.”

Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed. Brock is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.