St. Paul is “temporarily pausing” towing for most reports of abandoned vehicles amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement, Mayor Kaohly Her said Monday.

The city will have some towing exceptions during this time, including safety hazards and snow emergencies.

“The city is taking this step to help reduce any additional burden on residents during an unprecedented time,” according to an announcement from St. Paul.

If an abandoned vehicle is towed and the city is notified that the registered owner was detained, St. Paul may be able to waive towing fees and reimburse eligible costs. A vehicle is considered “abandoned” in St. Paul if it’s parked on the street and not moved in more than 48 hours.

The city of Minneapolis announced Friday that vehicles abandoned due to an ICE detention and towed to the city’s impound lot will be released at no cost.

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ChongLy “Saly” Scott Thao’s toddler grandson was napping on the couch of his St. Paul home when federal immigration agents broke through the door on Sunday afternoon and forced their way in with guns drawn. Thao, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Hmong elder, was quickly handcuffed and can be seen on video being led outside bare-chested in freezing temperatures, wearing nothing but Crocs, shorts and a children’s blanket.

Neighbors and other observers in the area blew whistles, honked horns and yelled outrage, with some recording the detention from a distance, but the agents — wearing military-style fatigues and equipment — got the 57-year-old into a vehicle and drove away.

“ICE drove him around for nearly an hour, questioned him, and fingerprinted him,” said his sister-in-law, Louansee Moua, in a social media post shared widely on Facebook. “Only after all of that did they realize he had no criminal history and no reason to be detained. They then dropped him back off at his apartment like nothing happened.”

“We believe they were looking for someone who previously lived there, but instead of asking for identification, they chose violence, intimidation, and humiliation,” she wrote.

In a subsequent interview, Moua said the family has lived in the location for two years and were not ICE’s intended targets.

A review of court records shows Thao has no criminal record in Minnesota.

Federal authorities say they were looking for sex offenders

A reporter’s email inquiry to an ICE Midwest field office was not immediately returned on Monday, but Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, shared an explanatory message on X claiming the agents were looking for two convicted sex offenders who both have final orders of removal from an immigration judge.

The two offenders — “the definition of the WORST OF THE WORST” wrote DHS on X — were identified as Lue Moua, who is wanted for sexual assault of a minor, rape, kidnapping, and domestic violence, and Kongmeng Vang, who is wanted for sexual assault and gang activity.

“The US citizen lives with these two convicted sex offenders at the site of the operation,” she wrote. “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.”

Moua said her brother-in-law, who lives on St. Paul’s East Side, has never committed a crime, and was still in mourning from losing his elderly mother around Christmas. “They live alone,” she said.

Naturalized citizen

Thao’s mother, Choua Thao, had been a renowned nurse during the Laotian Civil War, she said, where she was one of the first Hmong medical professionals to assist Americans and to be trained by the CIA during the “Secret War.” She helped run two hospitals that tended to American soldiers and Laotians alike.

She delivered a pair of premature twins and adopted one of them — ChongLy “Saly” Thao — while giving his twin sister to another nurse to raise.

“Choua ensured all her children became naturalized U.S. citizens,” Moua wrote. “She believed deeply in doing things the right way, in protecting life, dignity, and family. To see her son treated like this, in front of family, with weapons drawn, is beyond traumatic. This is not about politics. This is about basic human rights, due process, and accountability.”

Moua said she has since contacted the ACLU, the Minnesota Attorney General’s office and left emails and messages with multiple attorneys.

She’s also created a GoFundMe account to help cover legal and health costs for her brother-in-love, who suffers from severe psoriasis. As of noon

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on Monday, the online fundraiser had raised about $12,000 at tinyurl.com/ChongLy2026.

“No family should experience this,” she wrote. “No child should witness this. And no U.S. citizen should be treated this way.”

At a time in Minnesota marked by tension and protest, speakers at Martin Luther King Jr. Day events Monday reflected on the death of Renee Good, the assassination of state Rep. Melissa Hortman as well as the need to avoid further division and violence.

The 40th anniversary of the state-sponsored Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration, titled ‘One Dream. One Minnesota. Echoes of Unity’ held at the Ordway Concert Hall in St. Paul and the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Breakfast in Minneapolis sponsored by General Mills recognized community leaders, King’s legacy as well as the impact of thousands of federal law enforcement agents conducting immigration actions.

Monday’s breakfast included a theme of making “a career of humanity,” a reference to a 1959 speech by King which called on others to commit themselves to fighting for equal rights.

‘It’s the work of bringing change, which is never easy’

Soledad O’Brien, journalist and documentarian and keynote speaker at the breakfast, said Minneapolis is on frontpages of newspapers across the world. She acknowledged that Minnesotans “must be exhausted.”

“But every civil rights leader that I have ever interviewed talked about that moment when they, too, lost hope,” O’Brien said. “And when they thought maybe it was too hard or not worth it. And what brought them back to hope was their religious faith, number one. Also, the faith that personal sacrifice could lead to a collective community strength. And, number three, to be hopeful you had to do hopeful things. You had to serve your community. Just sitting around and trying to feel hopeful was not going to work … It’s the work of bringing change, which is never easy.”

Gov. Tim Walz, in a video interview aired during the Ordway event, said bridging divisions is especially important right now.

“Dr. King often times talked about that sitting down, hearing people, of course, peaceful resistance, but saying, ‘Look, these things that we’re doing are not right. People are being left out. We’re discriminating against people. But here’s what we can do to make it better,’” Walz said. “And I think right now the challenge is that we talk past each other. It doesn’t mean you have to agree on everything, but I think hearing people out – and in a time where there are those that are trying to divide us on purpose.”

In attendance at the breakfast were members of the Hortmans’ family. Hortman, who was assassinated in June along with her husband Mark. Melissa Hortman was honored at the event for her service and advocacy for the state.

‘We do not accept racism’

Speakers at both events also acknowledged the challenging times that Minnesotans have faced as thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and other federal agents have entered the state, leading to daily protests and the shooting death of Good in Minneapolis.

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, president emeritus of The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, spoke of his experience in jail in Alabama when he

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was 12 years old for his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The death of Good reminded Hrabowski of the Baptist Street Church Bombing, which killed four Black girls in 1963, he said. Those girls were called names, “as they’re calling the name Renee Good right now,” he said. Hrabowski encouraged people not to buy into violence.

“But keep letting people know we do not accept evil. We do not accept evil. No, we do not. We do not accept lies…We do not accept racism. As a country, we are better than this. We are better than this. We believe in the goodness of humanity,” Hrabowski said.

At 1 p.m. Friday, ABC News aired an interview with Abigail Adelsheim-Marshall, who owns St. Paul’s Mischief Toy Store with her parents Dan Marshall and Millie Adelsheim. She discussed the store’s decision to distribute free whistles that citizens have been using to alert neighbors of the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“She delivered a very strident anti-ICE message, which we’re incredibly proud of,” said Dan Marshall. “Three hours later, two plainclothes ICE agents came into our store and served us with a Notice of Inspection.”

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The agents were asking for I-9 documents — which prove people are legal to work in this country — from the store’s employees. Marshall said the store has been audited for various things in the past, but this was different. For starters, the notice listed the store by its name, rather than its legal name Mischief LLC, which has been used in every other government document the store has received. Also, Marshall said, he was alerted to previous audits by mail, not by in-person agents.

“In 27 years of being retailers in St. Paul, we’ve never been audited for this,” he said. “We have five part-time employees and three owners. So tell me why they want to waste time on five part-time employees. But here we are.”

Representatives for DHS and ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

The owners of Mischief Toy Store have been outspoken in opposition to both ICE and President Trump. In April, the store joined a lawsuit with a handful of other retailers and manufacturers against the U.S. government in an effort to roll back international tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

Marshall’s daughter Ada Adelsheim was working when the ICE agents arrived. They flashed IDs, but Adelsheim didn’t take a photo of them. The agents left behind paperwork for the store to complete. The store’s lawyer, who specializes in small business legal issues, told Marshall numerous immigrant-owned businesses have also been hit with this audit.

“I’m going to be mailing the documentation they requested along with a letter from our lawyer and hopefully that’s enough,” Marshall said. “I hope they don’t go out of their way to find trivial errors in the forms. We’re pretty sure this was used as harassment.”

He said the documentation also asked the store not to publicize the fact they received it.

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“That was a request we chose to ignore,” Marshall said. “At the same time, we restocked our anti-ICE yard signs.”

The store posted a photo of the letter on social media, where it quickly took off. Marshall said the ACLU reached out along with numerous elected officials. Business-wise, Marshall said, the traffic at Mischief felt like the weekend before Christmas. In the first three hours after opening on Saturday, they sold 250 anti-ICE yard signs. Marshall said the store is paying it forward and will donate $5,000 to local nonprofits.

“I’m feeling super anxious about our community and what’s happening,” Marshall said. “It’s traumatizing to see my neighbors being terrorized. It’s one of the worst things I’ve seen in my life. But I’m also feeling defiant. This is an attempt to silence us and it’s going to do the opposite.”