Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk appeared to support a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that made international news.
“It is pure evil for people to stop the arrest of child predators,” Musk wrote on X, responding to reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested a U.S. citizen who wouldn’t cooperate with agents during an operation seeking two convicted sex offenders.
The Department of Homeland Security said the U.S. citizen, later released, resided at the address of the two offenders and would not identify himself to the ICE agents.
Musk and President Donald Trump had a public falling out last summer after he headed the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative.
Musk’s comments on the immigration operation come after a viral Reuters photo of the agents arresting a man wearing shorts and Crocs with a blanket thrown over his shoulders on a snowy day in St. Paul.
“Marching half-naked elderly people out into the snow, your tax dollars at work,” author and columnist Jill Filipovic wrote on X above a post sharing the photo.
According to the DHS account of the incident, federal agents on Sunday went to the address of the two convicted sex offenders. Their convictions include sex with a minor, sexual assault, domestic violence, sex assault with penetration in the first degree, and violating a protective order.
“Both also have convictions for failure to register as sex offenders. They both have final orders of removal from an immigration judge,” according to DHS.
Upon arriving at the home, agents found ChongLy Thao, 56, inside, according to Reuters. But Thao refused to identify himself or be fingerprinted, according to DHS, so he was taken into custody to determine his identity. He was later released.
“He matched the description of the targets,” DHS said in a statement on X. “As with any law enforcement agency, it is standard protocol to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for safety of the public and law enforcement.”
The two convicted sex offenders remain “at large in St. Paul,” according to DHS. The department has pledged to provide “the public with photos and descriptors to help us locate and apprehend these public safety threats.”
Thao is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Laos, according to Reuters. His family later published a statement calling the ordeal “unnecessary, degrading, and deeply traumatizing,” and a relative of the family told Reuters that one of the two convicts ICE had targeted had previously lived at the residence but had moved out.
The incident comes less than two weeks after an ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis left 37-year-old Renee Good dead, leading to widespread anti-ICE protests in the Twin Cities. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have demanded federal immigration officials leave the community.
Despite opposition in the Twin Cities, the Trump administration has deployed hundreds more immigration enforcement agents to the area.
In the past six weeks, federal immigration officials have “arrested 3,000 criminal illegal aliens including vicious murderers, rapists, child pedophiles, and incredibly dangerous individuals,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday.
A total of 10,000 criminal illegal aliens have been arrested in Minneapolis over the past 12 months, according to Noem, who calls the operation a “victory for public safety.”
