Hundreds of community members and organizers confronted law enforcement on St. Paul’s East Side Tuesday as federal agents arrested a man at a home on Rose Avenue.
Federal agents arrested a man in the house and escorted him out in handcuffs at about 12:30 p.m. as people nearby yelled out his name. Neighbors told Sahan Journal that at least five people lived in the rental house.
At least three protestors were seen being detained at the scene. One appeared to have been injured in the head, and was removed on a stretcher by the St. Paul Fire Department.
Edwin Torres Desantiago, who is part of the Immigrant Defense Network, said the person who was arrested had taken refuge in the home, where other people were present, including a pregnant woman and a minor. He said that the individual knew the family living there.
“But obviously, I don’t think the family knew that this person was going to walk in with 40 agents chasing them,” Desantiago said. “Maybe there is a family connection there that we’ve not been able to verify.”
Witnesses said more than three dozen law enforcement officers from multiple agencies started arriving at the home located just south of Maryland Avenue near Edgerton Street at about 8:30 a.m. Agents wore vests identifying them as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Uniformed St. Paul police officers were also present.
Federal agents on the scene were visibly armed. St. Paul police initially formed a perimeter around the home to keep protesters back as the operation unfolded. St. Paul police used tear gas and pepper spray to clear people from the street to establish that barrier.
“The way that our police officers showed up today was abhorrent,” St. Paul City Council Member Hwa Jeong Kim, who was tear gassed at the scene by St. Paul police, told Sahan Journal. “What I witnessed was they secured the scene for federal agents and helped clear the way for them to leave with this person.”
Mayor Melvin Carter arrived at the scene as the federal operation was unfolding.
“I have the same questions you have,” he said addressing a small crowd, adding that “our police officers [are here] to make sure the streets are safe,” and “did not enforce federal immigration policy today.”
St. Paul police Chief Axel Henry issued a statement on YouTube about the incident, saying that federal authorities were conducting a “detail” when their perimeter was broken by protesters. Henry said that’s when St. Paul police were called in to assist, because “the street was compromised with foot and vehicle traffic, and a dangerous situation was unfolding.”
“I understand that our public is greatly frustrated by these issues, but be clear, Saint Paul Police officers are not doing immigration enforcement, but we do have a responsibility to make sure that laws aren’t broken in our city,” Henry said.
A police incident report obtained by Sahan Journal indicated that St. Paul police were called in for crowd control assistance at 9:52 a.m. The incident report redacted the identity of the caller and did not identify which agency called for assistance.
ICE did not return a message seeking comment. Neither ICE nor DHS issued public statements about Tuesday’s arrest.
At a news conference Tuesday evening, Carter said that while protesters were mostly peaceful, a few individuals threw rocks and bricks, which prompted some of the force from St. Paul police. However, he said, he had lingering questions about the use of chemical weapons earlier in the day before bricks and rocks were thrown.
“The police department has already begun conducting a full review of every use of force that was done today,” he said, adding that Henry is combing through all of Tuesday’s body-worn camera footage.
That process could take time, and Mayor-elect Kaohly Vang Her may have to share the results after she assumes office in January, Carter said.
Ma Yang, who lives next door to where the arrest occurred, said he saw uniformed officers when he took his son to school in the morning. Yang said the home is a rental, and has been occupied by Latino tenants for a year.
Claire Matthews Lingon handed out water and tissue paper to people who were tear-gassed by St. Paul police. She said the home’s tenants have young children who are always playing in the yard.
“They’re super friendly,” she said. “They’ve been in the neighborhood longer than we have.”
Demonstrator Tim Marino confronted law enforcement officers in front of the house.
“We’re just here because we don’t want to see them taking any more of our neighbors,” he told Sahan Journal.
After federal agents left the scene about 12:30 p.m. with the man they arrested, St. Paul police officers backed down the block on foot followed by angry demonstrators. Protesters followed them to the end of the block, where the confrontation escalated when St. Paul police deployed pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets on the crowd.
The events drew criticism from Governor Tim Walz and other elected officials.
“We are monitoring the situation in St. Paul and working to understand what unfolded. We received no heads up from federal authorities on this operation,” Walz posted on Facebook Tuesday afternoon. “While we are always willing to work together on public safety, that is clearly not what this chaotic situation was about.”
“We’re still gathering information about what happened in St. Paul, but what we do know is that once again, federal authorities provided no notice to local leaders or law enforcement,” State Sen. Tina Smith said in a statement. “This is their playbook: no warning, no transparency, no coordination. Their goal here isn’t safety, it’s to sow chaos, fear, and intimidation. Minnesotans deserve answers.”
Carter said Tuesday evening that federal agents had “created a chaotic scene,” and that he sees the recent federal law enforcement raids in St. Paul as a “threat to public safety.”
By now, he said, he had more answers about last week’s raid at Bro-Tex, a cloth wiper manufacturer, where ICE arrested 14 people, than Tuesday’s incident.
In last week’s raid, he said, one of the 14 people had a criminal charge — but, despite the federal government’s insistence that they were pursuing violent criminals, none of them had a criminal conviction.
“Every single person they arrested at Bro-Tex last week was some law-abiding person trying to go to work that morning,” Carter said. “The consequence of those actions is that families who are trying to decide whether it’s safe to take their children to school tomorrow, don’t know. That people who just want to go to work tomorrow and be a part of our community are afraid to do that.”
Staff reporter Becky Z. Dernbach contributed to this report.
