ICE agents were reportedly going door to door in Minnesota asking people to identify where their Asian neighbors live, according to reports Wednesday.
Vice President JD Vance last week signaled that federal agents would take the surprising action in his comments about "door-to-door" ICE raids, and it appeared that move was underway across Twin City neighborhoods, The New Republic reported.
ICE officers apparently went to St. Paul resident Elizabeth Lugert-Thom's home last week, according to a report from The Chicago Tribune. She warned in a Facebook post about the encounter where agents who were not wearing identification badges or disclosing their names asked her to share the location of any Hmong or Asian neighbors after they asked about a person they were searching for in the area.
“They said, ‘This is for your safety. We need to find this person,’” Lugert-Thom told The Tribune.
Lugert-Thom told the agents she did not know the alleged suspect. That's when the masked officers shifted their request.
“They specifically asked me if I knew where the Hmong families lived on my street and in the neighborhood,” she added, explaining that she evaded their questions and did not share any neighbor names with them.
“I was a bit shaken and a bit shocked of what I was asked to do,” Lugert-Thom said, telling them she didn't know about what they were asking.
The agents responded, asking: “Well, what about the Asian families?”
Between February and July 2025, the arrests of Asian immigrants by ICE officers climbed to 3,705 arrests — more than tripling the 1,054 arrests of Asian people arrested under the Biden administration, according to a UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs study published in September.
