A DHS official was criticized Monday after admitting that ICE agents had wrongly taken a U.S. citizen who was showering and forced him outside his home in his underwear in the freezing cold.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin attempted to respond to a social post where Louansee Moua claimed that ICE broke down the door of her brother-in-law Saly's Minnesota apartment on Sunday. In her post on X, McLaughlin described the alleged targeted operation in Saint Paul, despite the reality that the man ICE agents handcuffed was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
"Yesterday in St. Paul, ICE conducted a targeted operation of 2 convicted sex offenders. One of the criminal targets had convictions for sex with a minor and sexual assault. The other target had convictions for sex assault with penetration in the first degree, domestic violence, and violating a protective order. Both also have convictions for failure to register as sex offenders. They both have final orders of removal from an immigration judge," McLaughlin claimed.
"The US citizen lives with these two convicted sex offenders at the site of the operation. The individual refused to be fingerprinted or facially ID’d. He matched the description of the targets. As with any law enforcement agency, it is standard protocol to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for safety of the public and law enforcement," she added.
"Both of these sexual predators remain AT LARGE in St. Paul. We will be providing the public with photos and descriptors to help us locate and apprehend these public safety threats," McLaughlin wrote.
The internet responded with outrage over McLaughlin's admission.
"Incredible: this DHS statement isn’t a rebuttal — it’s a confession. They confirm terrorizing and humiliating an innocent American citizen. Not one word of apology for dragging him out of his home half-naked into the freezing cold," Democratic Matt McDermott wrote on X.
"The main point here being that DHS is admitting to unlawfully detaining a United States citizen and they’re now trying to smear him to obfuscate that fact," attorney Blake Allen wrote on X.
"Here’s a DHS official defending the fact that a warrantless search was performed against a U.S. citizen without a criminal record, who was detained and walked out into the snow in his underwear, because the agents were searching for two other people who weren’t even there," user A. Scott Woodstuff wrote on X.
"DHS confirms they detained an elderly U.S. citizen in St. Paul on Sunday," Pro Publica writer Nicole Foy wrote on X.
"the explanation from DHS is interesting. DHS claims two s3x offenders live at the home. They didn't find them. Instead, they took the legal resident with no record into custody and never found the two sex offenders," freelance investigative journalist Michael Volpe wrote on X.