Federal immigration agents detained a volunteer food shelf delivery driver on Wednesday in the parking lot of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center on St. Paul’s Kent Street, city-owned property that adjoins a city rec center and is temporarily hosting public library services.
Over the objections of community center staffers and legal observers, federal agents approached, handcuffed and detained Thao Xiong around 7:30 a.m. in the center parking lot, where they can be seen on video forcing him into one of three black sport utility vehicles they had driven onto the property.
“I showed them my documents already,” Xiong can be heard on video explaining to a center staffer who recorded him being led away. “He volunteers here,” the staffer tells the agents, pleadingly.
It was unclear on Wednesday evening where Thao was being held.
Volunteered at center
St. Paul City Council Member Anika Bowie and others later shared news of Thao’s detainment on Facebook.
Officials with St. Paul Parks and Recreation and the St. Paul Public Library system directed a reporter’s questions on Wednesday to Benny Roberts, director of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, who issued a brief written statement.
Roberts, who did not identify Xiong by name, confirmed a volunteer had been detained and said “we are in contact with his family and community partners and are working to ensure the family receives all possible supports and resources from HQB.”
Roberts added later, “A lot of info is spreading but we’re still working on getting accurate info.”
City-owned property
While the nonprofit Hallie Q. Brown community organization operates the building, the structure itself is city-owned, and adjoins the city’s Martin Luther King Recreation Center. In addition to a food shelf, it hosts a childcare operation, and has housed the books and staff of the city library system’s Rondo Community Library since December, when the Dale Street location closed for a year-long renovation.
Xiong’s detainment flies in the face of recent city-driven efforts to keep ICE out of city properties, including Parks and Rec lots, during Operation Metro Surge, which has drawn some 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota.
The mayor’s office issued a formal cease and desist letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Dec. 19, with the goal of preventing ICE agents from using city-owned parking lots for immigration enforcement.
On Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council held a public hearing on a proposed ordinance amendment that would codify the ban against ICE staging in city-owned lots, enshrining it in city law.
Neither effort has apparently stopped ICE agents from doing exactly that.
Community organizer
Jennifer Nguyen Moore, a 2018 candidate for the Ramsey County Board, said Xiong is the father of a young girl and has lent his voice and support to various campaigns for public office, including her own.
“He’s extremely passionate, and is very serious about justice and human rights,” said Nguyen Moore, recalling how he rode around on an adult tricycle-style bike carrying her campaign banner and spoke to neighbors on her behalf. “He just really loves the community, and he likes to amplify people.”
In interviews and presentations to the city council, Xiong, who is Hmong, has spoken openly about his experiences as a teen drug dealer, gang member and petty criminal and his subsequent incarceration, which ended a decade ago. He’s described himself as a community organizer in Frogtown and the North End and a voice for change.
“I got released from prison in November 2016 and I literally woke up one morning and I remember thinking ‘I’m gonna become somebody that will champion my community,’” said Xiong, in a written testimonial on the website of In Progress, a St. Paul-based arts nonprofit he became active with around 2018.
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“Every morning I wake up I have to challenge — challenge the police, challenge the district council, challenge our local government officials…. all these people,” he wrote. “But every morning I wake up and the only person I have to challenge is the person I’m staring at in the mirror. Every day I challenge that person to be better than the person yesterday.”
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