Bulwark Takes - ICE Dragged an Old Man Into the Snow. Now DHS Is Lying About It.

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Sam Stein and Tim Miller give their takes on the disturbing footage of ICE agents detaining an elderly U.S. citizen in Minneapolis with no warrant, no explanation, and no apology. The raid went wrong at every step and DHS is still defending it.Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/TAKES and use promo code TAKES at checkout.

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Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullark. And I'm here with Tim Miller. It's MLK Day, putting the work. We are monitoring the situation in Minnesota, as usual. And honestly, Tim, it's like we could probably record one of these every three hours. For sure. Every three hours. So it's like, you know, trying to be a little bit more selective with what we're doing. But this video has been blowing up throughout the last 24 hours. Basically, it involves a confrontation with an elderly man, I believe it's Chung Lee Scott Tao, who on January 18th, around 1.30 p.m., a group of ice agents, like 7 or 8 or whatever, just storm his house, drag him out as he's in a bathrobe and shorts or underwear. I don't even know. It's fucking freezing out there. And they just bring him to their SUVs. It gets placed in SUV, question for an hour, fingerprinted. And then ice confirmed. what they should have known from the start, which is that he's a U.S. citizen. He has no criminal record. And what happens? He gets dropped back at his home. It is a startling video. I was wondering, any initial thoughts on when you first saw this? Well, I think this is particularly sad, you know, because it's, we've been obviously focusing on the Somali community in Minnesota. But there's also this big Hmong community, Asian immigrants, small, tight-knit group that had you know, been kind of soft

Republican supporters back when I was a Republican. Like I was mostly familiar with Hmungs from like the outreach to that group during election season. Typical. And from the movie Grand Terino, if you've ever seen the movie Grand Torino. Could not be a better moment to watch that movie.

Clint Eastwood plays an old race as fuck. Oh yeah. And all the Hmungs move into the neighborhood. And he hates them at first. Yeah, yeah, hates them at first. And then, you know, like in the other, you know, good movie about the American melting pot at the end, you know, he's eating their cuisine, you know, recognizing the good family nature of them.

Anyway, good movie to watch them. But anyway, you just see, it's like there's no reason to think this guy possibly could have been a danger. And I think that's my first thought and we'll get to the DHS response. But like, once you've stormed the house with the jackbooted thugs, once you've gone in there and then you've looked at this man, I think that maybe you can have a moment to think, well, it's possibly we should let this frail old elderly person. you know, have a moment to, like, put on his jacket, at least before we, you know, perp walk him outside his home. So anyway, let's watch some of the videos so people can get the context. Look at how many of them there are.

It's ridiculous. Yeah. And I think just for folks who haven't seen this, just look at the guy, close up picture of him. This is just totally gratuitous over the top and not required. And, you know, as a result, you end up with this just menacing treatment of somebody that is here legally. That's what grabbed me, which is at various points, the ICE agents could have done a number of things differently. Let's say they just, let's just say they assumed, I mean, they obviously assumed. Let's say they thought there was a bunch of, you know, illegal aliens in there. Okay? And they come upon the house. They barge in. They didn't have to necessarily do that.

But let's say they just barge in and they find this old man in his shorts. At that point, you can say, hey, we have some questions. Like, what are you doing here? Like, can you like tell us, are you a citizen? Is there anyone else here? We want to bring you down to like, because we don't believe you. We want to bring you down to the station or to whatever, Whipple or whatever, and question you, Can you just get dressed first? Like it's freezing outside, get dressed, you look old and frail. At no point did they do anything humane at all.

Instead, they paraded this guy in front of his neighborhood, humiliated him, endangered his health. Who needs to be out there at that age and that in that weather? It's awful, awful, awful treatment. Yeah. Totally necessary. And he's here legally. And they just dropped him back on.

Citizen. Just mentioned a couple things for that. You can't see from the video. It says this, and this is obvious they're doing this everywhere without showing a warrant or asking for identification, multiple armed agents entered the apartment. So we can see that in that video, but now, you know, he's confirming that they didn't offer a warrant. He said, once inside the house, they pointed guns at the family and handcuffed Shang Li inside the home. His five-year-old grandson was napping on the sofa, woke up crying and fear.

And then when he's outside, he's in his underwear and crocks. He's driven around for an hour by being questioned. After fingerprinting, did they confirm what they should know from the start? Is the U.S. citizen with no criminal record? Drop back off at home with no apology and no explanation. Nothing. And like you keep getting these,

and I want to go into what DHS said, but you keep something I'm seeing a lot of on social media for folks who are blessedly inside a liberal bubble and are not seeing the people defending this. Like one of the common arguments for the more reason, I don't know if there's anybody, any reasonable way to defend any of this, but like, you know, the less bloodthirsty wing of the people defending the ice actions. What they're saying a lot is like, you know, this is treatment of this guy is wrong.

But anytime you do something at the scale, like they're going to be a couple of mistakes. And like, you know, because you know, I'm saying this over the weekend, 75% of the people that we've gotten are criminals. It's just like, it's not true. Right. And Noam was question was corrected about this. Like, by their own stats, their own stats and their liars. 47% have a criminal record of some kind. We don't know exactly what that means.

So it means over half the people who detained had no criminal record of any kind. And then, you know, on top of that, it's like in a country, you have to balance, like, rights and freedoms with public safety, right? And it's like, so sure, yeah, people are going to make mistakes. Humans make mistakes in every context. This is just time and time again, like extremely gratuitous mistakes going after people that have done nothing. and doing so in the most aggressive and way possible in a way that is a total attack on their rights as citizens. Right. So I'm not a mathematician.

I'm just going to say that. But 75%, let's just give them 75%. They've also announced that they- I mean, their stat is 47% and Christy Noem said 75% to TV. Let's use their actual stat, 47%. Let's use Christy-Nomes made-up stat, 75%. They've also announced that they've arrested or detained 10,000. people in Minnesota, Minneapolis. So what they're saying is 2,500 people they've put into

detention, have no criminal records. Are you proud of that? Is that like, hooray, let's cheer that we've done that to 2,500 people. Is that great? No. Bollwork takes a sponsored by Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online at a timeline. And surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make anyone vulnerable. It's easier than ever to find personal information that people online, having your address, phone number, and family members' names, hanging out there on the internet can have actual consequences in the real world. It makes everyone vulnerable. More and more online partisans and nefarious actors will find this data

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Now at a special discount for our listeners, get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to join DeleteMe.com slash takes and use promo code takes at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to Join DeleteMe.com slash takes. And enter code takes at the checkout. That's joined delete me.com slash takes code takes. All right. I want to get to the DHS response because your girl, Trisha McLaughlin, as is her custom,

went on Twitter to offer some nonsense. Folks, I don't want to like, I just want to be straight about Trisha McLaughlin. Like, she has been caught lying so many times, so many times that you cannot take, it's irresponsible to take what she says seriously. You just can't do it. And so you shouldn't.

This is what she said, okay? Yesterday in St. Paul, ICE conducted a target operation of two convicted sex offenders. One of the criminal targets had convictions for sex with a minor and sexual assault. The other target had convictions for sex assault with penetration in the first degree. She's so gratuitous. Domestic violence and violating a protective order. Both also have convictions, failure to register sex offenders, they both have final orders of removal. The U.S. citizen lives with these two convicted sex offenders at the site of the operation.

The individual refused to be fingerprinted or facially IDed. He matched the description of the term. How is it possibly you could refuse to be facially IDed when you've handcuffed an old man in his home? Couldn't you just facially ID him right there? We and Bill Crystal went to this for a while. I'm kind of, I have big notes of facial idea as a general statement. But you can't. What do?

This? How could? Yeah, exactly. Continuing. He matched the description of the targets. So they're racially profiling. As with any law enforcement agency, it is standard protocol to all individuals in the house. I also, can I just, I just want to.

He matched the description of the targets. The targets were elderly among individuals? Good point. And who does he live with in the home? Does he match the description of the targets and they're looking for Asian men? Like, literally. Like, I guess it's possible that three 80-year-old Hmong men all live in the same home. And two of them are sex offenders and one is not.

But that seems extremely implausible to me. I didn't really pick that one up. Good point. As with any law enforcement agency, it's standard protocol to hold old to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for safety of the public and law enforcement. Oh my God. But this is the kicker. Both of these sexual predators remain at large in St. Paul. We'll be providing the public with photos and descriptors to help us locate and apprehend these public safety threats. So in her defense statement, Tricia McLaughlin says, we got it wrong.

We racially profiled. And the people who were targeting are still on the loose. I mean, that's the defense. Yeah. Heck of a job, DHS. Great work. You have 3,000. You've invaded, a city with thousands of agents. You can't find the people that you're looking for, but you've successfully detained many people that have done nothing wrong and are citizens. Not exactly, you know, batting a thousand there. Hey guys. Listen, after we recorded this video, the family of Chunglee, Scott Tao put out a statement that puts into serious question whether what Trisha McLaughlin said was indeed factual. I know. Shock. Shock that it could pop up. possibly be disputed. But yeah, they are denying it categorically. I'm going to read you this statement.

It's a bit long, so bear with me, but it's important to have the entire perspective here. It reads this. Mr. Tao is a United States citizen with no criminal record. He does not live with, nor has he ever lived with the individual's DHS claims were targets of this operation. The only people residing at the home are Mr. Tao, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his young grandson. They do not know the individual's DHS references. Ice agents did not present a warrant, did not ask for identification and nevertheless forcibly entered the home with weapons drawn. Mr. Tau went willingly with ice, despite knowing he had done nothing wrong. During the operation, Mr. Tau was removed from his home wearing only underwear in approximately 12-degree weather

in full view of his family and neighbors. He suffers from severe psoriasis, a serious medical condition that is exacerbated by extreme cold and stress. The treatment was unnecessary, degrading, in terms. deeply traumatizing. The family strongly objects to DHS's attempt to publicly justify this conduct. The false and misleading claims, these statements have caused additional harm to a family already struggling to recover from a terrifying and unjustified encounter. The family is actively pursuing legal representation as filed complaints with the ACLU of Minnesota and the Office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Due to the ongoing legal process, no further comment will be made

at this time. So there it is. Spokesperson for the family of Chongli-Scott Tao, just categorically denying what Trisha McLaughlin said and hinting that there will be a legal case brought against ICE and DHS potentially. We'll keep track of it. Now back to the conversation that Tim and I were having. So I have a question for you about this. And it's sort of rhetorical. Is there anything ICE could do? Like a rogue ice agent. Is there anything a rogue ice agent could do that the administration would not defend at this point? I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, who the hell knows? I've been watching Landman. I don't know. If they catch them on tape raping, a Mago supporting woman maybe, like, sure. You know what I mean? Like, I'm sure we could come up with some fantastical thing. But yeah, I don't.

They're going around the best. to defend heinous choice after Hamous choice. Which brings me to my last story. So obviously, a lot of this has been kicked up in the aftermath of Renee Good's killing. Perry Stein over at the Washington Post has a really important report today, which says this. In the media aftermath of the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis, FBI agents launched a civil rights investigation into the actions of the immigration officer who shot her, according to three people familiar with the investigation. In Asian Minnesota, conduct an initial review of the shooting and determined that sufficient, grounds exist to open a civil rights probe into the actions of Jonathan Ross.

I know Kristianam doesn't want us to say his name. The officer who shot good, according to the people. But the existence of the civil rights of investigation stands in stark contrast to public statements made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. And of course, naturally, DOJ is not doing the investigation that FBI determined there would be sufficient grounds to conduct. They just will not do basic one-on-one investigation and police and and Justice Department work.

And that's it. So it's a rogue agency that can do whatever the hell wants, including this. Yeah. I guess my reaction to that is that this is just only particularly stark because of the nature of ICE's just corruption and blatant crimes and blatant affronts to people's security and rights that we're seeing in front of our eyes. But like, that's basically their MO across the government right now. Like, they're not investigating allies, period.

End of story. Corruption, crypto. They're not doing public corruption investigations at all. They're not looking into companies who are aligned with the administration. Like, it's just, I mean, obviously it's particularly galling in this case since they killed a woman. But, you know, it's in line with what we're saying from the administration elsewhere. Yeah. And they're investigating Jacob Fry and Tim Walso.

And Don Lemon. But Grand Torino. is a great movie. And I think that we could all use a little bit of soul warming, you know. And so maybe, I don't know that does anything to help the among community right now that's being menaced by our government. Where is Clint Eastwood? Were you involved in the famous Clint Eastwood chair? In the chair thing?

Yeah, so I wasn't involved. That was fellow never temper Stewart Stevens who's behind that. People can go take it up with him. We love Stewart. We all have mistakes in our lives. He's got a very long career. Okay. People don't know.

We're talking about Clint East was spoke at the around the convention. to an empty chair. And how do you handle it? I mean, what do you say to people? Do you just, you know, I know people, people were wondering, you don't have it. Okay. But I'll tell you this. My one chair story is that Ryan's previous kept the chair in his office at the R&C as like

historical momento for people to like get pictures with and stuff. that should be in a museum somewhere. That's an artifact. Those were simpler times. Those were simpler times. All right, buddy, thank you for doing this. For those people watching, thank you for continuing to watch.

Obviously, like we said, up top, just a lot of shit going on. A lot of it is depressing. We're trying to sort through it for you all, bring you stuff that's piquing our interest and grabbing our attention. If you support this mission, if you support what we're doing,

subscribe to the feed. Thank you all. Talk to you later.