A Liberian immigrant who was detained when federal agents broke down the door to his home on Jan. 11 was held again for three hours Friday in a chaotic scene at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, family members said.
Garrison Gibson and his lawyer were at the Whipple Building to complete paperwork after a federal judge ordered his release from custody on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan found that agents had entered Gibson’s house without a judicial warrant and without his consent.
The check-in followed a harrowing week, where Gibson was sent first to a detention facility in Albert Lea, then to a camp at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, before he was returned to Minnesota.
At a news conference with the family on Saturday, attorney Mark Prokosch said he and his client expected Friday’s visit to be straightforward.
“We’ve got the judicial order from Judge Bryan, so we really didn’t have any concerns,” Prokosch said.
What followed was, as Prokosch described it, a chaotic situation where even the ICE agents were not aware of his redetention. In fact, one of the agents asked Prokosch to not sue him.
Gibson’s wife, Teyana, was on a call with him when he was in a different part of the Whipple Building after he was taken by the agents to be redetained.
“I could hear the confusion in the background, like, ‘Why is he here?’ They did not know what was going on,” she said, while another officer told family member Abena Abraham that it was a directive from the White House. “They said they messed up,” Garrison said, before he was let go.
Detained, released, then detained again
At a Saturday morning news conference at their lawyer’s office, Gibson and his family recounted a head-spinning week.
On Sunday, Jan. 11, at around 9 a.m., Garrison and Teyana Gibson were in their house, asleep with their 9-year-old daughter and her cousin, when federal agents started knocking on their door. “It wasn’t like a soft knock. It was like “boom boom boom boom boom!” Garrison recalled.
Garrison asked his daughter to go back to sleep and didn’t come out. A couple of hours later, more cars, and many more heavily armed federal agents, with a battering ram and guns pointed, broke down the door and barged in. Teyana Gibson was recording the whole time, and in the video can be heard trying to stop the agents from entering, saying there were children inside.
That day, Garrison, 37, was detained by federal agents in the Whipple Building at Fort Snelling. He was sent to Albert Lea and then flown to the immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas the next day, where he was held for two days.
On Thursday, Jan. 15, Byran ordered his release and ruled that his seizure from his home without a judicial warrant was unlawful and violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Gibson had been complying with his check-ins with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for years, and had had a check-in with his ICE supervisor two weeks prior.
Then, on Jan. 16, he was redetained for about three hours at the Whipple Building. Abraham, a relative, was told by an ICE agent that his redetention was a direct order from Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller.
In a written statement shared with Sahan Journal by the family on Tuesday, before he was re-detained, Teyana Gibson said the government’s actions are “about instilling fear in Black and brown communities.”
Garrison Gibson left Liberia when he was 6 or 7 years old. He and his wife have been together for 17 years, and have three children together.
“We’re strong, loving, crazy sometimes, you know, just like the average family,” Teyana Gibson, who works at a pediatric intensive care unit, said. “I work almost every day because ICE took his work permit, so he lost his job.” Garrison Gibson, who lost his work permit two years ago, takes care of his family at home.
“He’s very protective of us. I think I’m the princess and my daughter’s the queen of the house,” Teyana Gibson said.
That morning, when agents battered her door down, Teyana Gibson kept filming, and asserting her rights, asking to see a warrant. She said she kept recording to protect her family. “I had to make sure my daughter had her father, and I had to make sure that we had a record for everyone to see, not just for us in the home, just for everyone to see how they’re doing things.”
When the agents took Garrison Gibson to the car, he was in a T-shirt, hoodie, shorts, and slippers. Teyna Gibson wanted to give him a jacket. “It was cold outside. It’s wintertime …They didn’t even care.”
From inside the car, Garrison Gibson could see his wife sobbing, surrounded by neighbors. “That just made it worse, because I felt helpless, like I couldn’t do nothing to help her, because I was basically taken for no reason,” he said.
Sahan Journal reached to the Department of Homeland Security for comment but had not heard back by publication time.
In a statement to the Associated Press, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, said that Gibson has “a lengthy rap sheet [that] includes robbery, drug possession with intent to sell, possession of a deadly weapon, malicious destruction and theft.” She did not indicate if those were arrests, charges or convictions.
A rapid flight and threats of deportation
When he was finally taken to the Whipple Building, the first thing the agents did was to take “trophy pictures” with those they had detained, including Gibson. “One stood by me on the right side, one stood on the left side, and they were like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones,” he said.
They patted him down and cut his ankle monitor. Back at his home, Teyana Gibson got a call from his supervising officer who asked about his whereabouts as his ankle monitor was off.
“I was like, ‘You took him!’” to which the officer said that she’s not in Minnesota.
“The department that is responsible for monitoring you all of these past 17 years didn’t even know where he was that there was another group that was coming to get you,” Prokosch said to Gibson.
At the Whipple Building, Gibson was held for a little less than 24 hours, in a holding cell with about 40 other people with metal benches, no beds and the AC turned on high. Everybody had ankle shackles on. He said that even to access the bathroom they had no privacy.
The next day, at around 12:30 p.m., Gibson, along with multiple others were taken to the airport and told they were being taken to El Paso, Texas. Gibson was told he would be deported to Liberia from Texas. He described getting on the plane with shackles on his hands and feet. “It’s hard walking up a flight of stairs in shackles to board a plane,” he said.
The detention center in El Paso was only better in that it had metal bunk beds, Gibson said. There were about 80 people in a large room with him. During the two days he was held there, he had no contact with his family or attorney, a tactic that ICE has increasingly been using to isolate the detainees by swiftly flying them out of the state after detention.
When he was told he was being taken back to Minnesota, Gibson said he felt “relieved” because it meant they weren’t sending him back to Liberia, a country he hadn’t been to in over three decades.
It was their daughter’s 10th birthday when Gibson came home from detention.
Even though it’s been a couple of days since he has been back, Gibson said he has been afraid of going out. If he does leave the house even for a short while, his daughter calls him multiple times to check in. Teyana Gibson said that their daughter has been traumatized by the incident, and she hides anytime someone knocks on their door.
For his case going forward, Prokosch said that his firm, along with the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota will update the court on recent developments to ensure Garrison Gibson Gibson remains with his family.
In the coming days, they plan to pursue parallel actions in both immigration court and federal court, including efforts to reopen the removal case and seek long-term protection from detention through a habeas petition. Separately, Prokosch said they are considering potential civil rights claims stemming from alleged Fourth Amendment violations connected to the arrest, including possible civil litigation once the family’s immediate safety and release are secured.
When Gibson was taken from their home, a large crowd had gathered around their house, mostly their neighbors. They blew whistles, recorded the agents, and were assaulted by them in the process, Teyana Gibson said.
One of their neighbors, an elderly woman, was maced. When he came back home on Thursday evening, Gibson went to her house to thank her. “I just went across the street and hugged her and told her thank you for coming outside and being aware of the situation,” he said.
Teyana Gibson said she has been overwhelmed by the love and support her neighbors and community members have extended towards the family. “When they took him, I felt so broken, I felt exhausted. And to have all these people come and just bring food and show love and stand in the cold for hours … it helped me breathe,” she said.
