minneapolis

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota county is investigating the arrest of a Hmong American man by federal officers that was captured on video as a potential case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment, officials announced Monday.

Ramsey County Atty. John Choi and Sheriff Bob Fletcher said at a news conference they will pursue information from the Department of Homeland Security that they need for their investigation into the arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao in January. Ramsey County includes the state capital of St. Paul.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers bashed open the front door of Thao’s St. Paul home at gunpoint without a warrant, then led him outside in just his underwear and a blanket in freezing conditions.

“There are many facts we don’t know yet, but there’s one that we do know. And that is that Mr. Thao is and has been an American citizen. There’s not a dispute over that,” Fletcher said. “There’s no dispute that he was taken out of his house, forcibly taken out of his home and driven around.”

He continued: “Is that good law enforcement, to take an American citizen out of their home and drive them around aimlessly, trying to determine what they can tell them?’”

Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has refused so far to cooperate with other state and local investigations into the killings by federal officers of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Choi said they’re trying to determine whether any crimes were committed that they could prosecute under state or federal law.

“This is not about, any type of predetermined agenda other than to seek the truth and to investigate the facts,” he said.

Agents eventually realized Thao was a longtime U.S. citizen with no criminal record, Thao said in an interview with the Associated Press in January. They returned him to his home after a couple of hours.

Homeland Security later said ICE officers had been seeking two convicted sex offenders. Thao told the AP he had never seen the two men before and that they did not live with him.

Videos captured the scene, which included people blowing whistles and horns, and neighbors screaming at more than a dozen gun-toting agents to leave Thao’s family alone.

The state and the chief prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, sued the Trump administration last month to gain access to evidence they say they need to independently investigate three shootings by federal officers in Minneapolis, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

The lawsuit accuses the federal government of reneging on its promise to cooperate with state investigations after the surge of around 3,000 federal law enforcement officers into Minnesota.

Minnesota and Hennepin County have also appealed to the public to share information about federal officers’ potentially illegal activities, given the refusal by federal authorities to provide evidence.

The Trump administration has suggested Minnesota officials don’t have jurisdiction to investigate those cases. State and county prosecutors say they need to conduct their own inquiries because they don’t trust the federal government.

The Justice Department in January said it was opening a federal civil rights investigation into Pretti’s killing, and two officers have been placed on leave, but the agency said a similar federal probe was not warranted in Good’s death.

Vancleave and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Karnowski reported from Minneapolis.

As the time approached 10:30 Tuesday night — nearly three hours after Bruce Springsteen had marched onstage at Inglewood’s Kia Forum alongside 18 of his musical comrades — the 76-year-old rock legend told the crowd he hadn’t intended to be there.

“This is a tour that we never planned,” he said. “The E Street Band is here with you tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength. And we want to bring some hope and bring some strength for you.”

It wasn’t impossible to believe him.

After a two-year trek that finally wrapped last summer amid the release of a massive box set and a splashy Hollywood biopic, Springsteen might’ve been expected to spend 2026 counting his money and his accolades. Yet the way he tells it, the actions of a “corrupt, incompetent, racist, reckless and treasonous” president and his administration spurred him back into action.

“If you’re feeling helpless, if you’re feeling hopeless, if you’re feeling betrayed, if you’re feeling frustrated, if you’re feeling angry — I mean, I know I’ve been,” he said.

Tuesday’s show was the first of two this week at the Forum.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Thus the hastily arranged Land of Hope & Dreams tour: two months of U.S. concert dates that began last week in Minneapolis, where federal immigration agents killed two American citizens in January, and will wrap May 27 with a stadium show in Washington, D.C.

“The White House — this White House — is destroying the American idea,” Springsteen proclaimed during Tuesday’s gig, the first of two this week at the Forum.

Before we get to the performance itself, let’s acknowledge that the Boss is sticking his neck out here. Sure, he’s protected by his wealth and his celebrity; sure, he’s preaching to the choir in every city he and the E Street Band visit.

But what other musician on Springsteen’s level is speaking out the way he is right now?

On Tuesday, he introduced “Streets of Minneapolis” — a brand-new protest song in which he mentions both Alex Pretti and Renée Good by name — with a vividly detailed monologue about the circumstances of their deaths. Then he led his players through a fervent rendition of the driving folk-rock tune.

“It’s our blood and bones / And these whistles and phones / Against Miller and Noem’s f— lies,” Springsteen sang — one lyric that might’ve inspired President Trump this month to urge his followers to boycott the singer, whom he compared in a social media post to a “dried up prune who has suffered greatly from the work of a really bad plastic surgeon.” (In truth, Springsteen probably enjoyed that.)

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Whatever the risks of his speechifying, you had to admire — here in our age of political infotainment — the natural finesse with which Springsteen threaded his prepared rhetoric into Tuesday’s set. He knew just when to have the E Streeters vamp so he could talk about NATO and USAID; he knew when it was wiser to lead the audience in a chant of “ICE out.”

Indeed, as much as he was speaking his mind, Springsteen was providing his fans with an opportunity to work out their own anxieties in rowdy singalong versions of classics like “Born in the U.S.A.,” “No Surrender,” “The Promised Land” and “Out in the Street.”

If the concert’s animating impulse was outrage, the prevailing emotion was joy, even — or especially — when the music was at its most pointed, as in covers of Edwin Starr’s “War” and “Clampdown” by the Clash.

With an extra E Street member in Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, Springsteen made “Badlands” and “Death to My Hometown” shimmer and stomp; “Murder Incorporated” was a gritty soul-rock rave-up, while “Youngstown” got a scabrous guitar solo by Nils Lofgren that reminded you of his other gig in Neil Young’s Crazy Horse. (Springsteen’s wife, Patti Scialfa, who said in 2024 that she has cancer, wasn’t part of the band Tuesday.)

About halfway through the show, Springsteen sang “American Skin (41 Shots),” the early-2000s song about racialized police violence he wrote after Amadou Diallo’s killing by four NYPD officers; he followed that with “Long Walk Home,” which he described as “a prayer for our country.”

Bruce Springsteen

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Played back to back, the songs made you think of how little agreement we’ve come to over the last quarter-century about who gets to be called an American. The identity is always under attack, and it’s always being defended.

Anyone but a Bruce stan would admit that Springsteen leaned a little hard on recent stuff here: “House of a Thousand Guitars,” “My City of Ruins,” “Wrecking Ball” and the like.

Yet as with his speechmaking, he can still read a room. “It’s gotta be done,” he said with a grin as the band revved up “Hungry Heart,” one of a handful of old pop hits he did that broke from the evening’s topical throughline.

Near the end — in an encore that went bang-bang-bang with “Born to Run” into “Bobby Jean” into “Dancing in the Dark” — Springsteen, his shirt drenched with sweat, took a seat onstage and thanked members of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center for attending the show. (Also in the house Tuesday: Henry Winkler.)

Then he offered one final homily before closing with Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.”

“These are hard times, but we’ll make it through,” he said. “We’re the Americans. What do they say? Americans do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else.” He shook his head as though he were running through a mental inventory.

“F—!”

WASHINGTON — The Senate is on track to confirm Markwayne Mullin as Department of Homeland Security secretary, President Trump’s nominee to take over the embattled department after firing Kristi Noem amid a public backlash over the administration’s immigration enforcement and mass deportation operations.

Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma known for his close friendship with Trump, has tried to present himself as a steady hand, saying that his goal as secretary would be to get the department off the front page of the news. But Mullin tangled with Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, who questioned Mullin’s character and temperament during last week’s combative confirmation hearing.

Senators advanced Mullin’s nomination on Sunday during a rare weekend session on a largely party-line vote, and confirmation is expected late Monday.

He would take the helm of the department at a difficult time. The department’s routine funding has been shut down, leading to long waits at U.S. airports during the busy spring break travel season, as Democrats demand changes in immigration enforcement operations after the deaths of two U.S. citizens during protests this year in Minneapolis.

Trump announced over the weekend he’s ordering immigration officers to help Transportation Security Administration agents, which lawmakers and others warned could escalate tensions at crowded airports.
Although the senator comes to the position after more than a dozen years in Congress, and with the management experience of running an expanding family plumbing business in Oklahoma, he has not been seen as a key force in immigration issues.

A former mixed martial arts fighter and collegiate wrestler who has led early-morning workout sessions in the members-only House gym, he became close with members of both parties and is often seen as a negotiator in partisan Washington.

It is his loyalty to Trump that landed him the job, and he’s not expected to sway from the president’s approach. Mullin was a strong supporter of Trump’s immigration agenda and ICE officers before being tapped for the Homeland Security job.

“I can have different opinions with everybody in this room, but as secretary of homeland I’ll be protecting everybody,” Mullin said during his confirmation hearing.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.