Federal agents deployed tear gas under a Minneapolis family's vehicle, trapping six children inside

On the evening of January 14, 2026, Destiny and Shawn Jackson were driving home to north Minneapolis with their six children — ranging from six months to eleven years old, two with severe asthma — after their oldest son's basketball game, when their SUV became trapped between federal agents and protesters near a demonstration against Operation Metro Surge, the large federal immigration-enforcement deployment then underway in the Twin Cities. The protest had erupted the same evening an ICE agent shot a man in the leg elsewhere in the city, in a separate incident. The Jacksons said they had not known about the protest and had pulled over only because parked cars and demonstrators made it difficult to drive through; federal agents on either side of their vehicle blocked their attempt to back out. Destiny Jackson recalled an agent yelling at her husband to move the car, and her husband responding that they were trying to.

Moments later, Jackson saw flash-bangs outside her window and then a tear gas canister roll under the car. The vehicle's airbags deployed, the doors auto-locked, and the car filled with gas while the family was trapped inside. Jackson and her husband could not force the windows open; she climbed into the back seat, working by feel through the smoke to unlock doors for her children one at a time. Once her husband's door came open, bystanders helped pull the family out and into a nearby home. The Jacksons' six-month-old, D'Iris, was the last extracted and was not breathing when he reached the house; Destiny Jackson performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation until he revived. The infant, along with Jackson and two of the children with asthma, was taken to the hospital and the family underwent decontamination; D'Iris continued to experience nighttime congestion and coughing in the days that followed.

DHS initially posted on social media that it was "horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots," telling people to "STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN" — a post the agency deleted after DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN the family had not intentionally brought their children to the protest and "didn't bring their kids to the riot." McLaughlin said agents "followed their training and reasonably deployed crowd control measures" and were "not targeting the family," describing "hundreds of rioters and agitators" who had "surrounded law enforcement" and thrown fireworks. ICE declined to comment on the family's specific account. The incident followed a federal judge's separate ruling restricting agents' use of crowd-control measures against peaceful protesters in Minneapolis.