ICE agent drew gun, entered St. Paul restaurant chasing unidentified person, traumatizing staff and customers

On the afternoon of January 19, 2026 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent got out of his vehicle with his handgun already drawn and pushed into Eastside Thai, a restaurant on St. Paul, Minnesota's East Side, seconds after a person ran past the restaurant's front door during a street search. Video shows the agent enter while diners and staff sat nearby; co-owner Kou Lee said in a Facebook post that the agent accused the owners of "hiding the kid" he said he was chasing, and co-owner Elle Lee told Storyful the agent was "shouting at us" as he came in. He then stepped back out, re-entered with the weapon still unholstered, exchanged words with Elle Lee at the threshold, and left. No one inside the restaurant was struck, and the person the agent had been pursuing was never identified or apprehended on camera.

The incident happened roughly three weeks into Operation Metro Surge, the roughly 3,000-agent ICE and Border Patrol deployment to the Twin Cities that had already produced the fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis and an armed chokehold arrest at a St. Paul gas station days earlier. Elle Lee said multiple customers and staff members were traumatized by the encounter: "My business was disrupted, and now my staff are hesitant to come to work, while those still needing to pay bills are showing up feeling worried and scared."

Asked about the incident on January 21, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her did not comment on it directly but told PBS NewsHour that "people are afraid, they are frustrated, they are angry." USA Today reported that the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection did not respond to requests for comment on the incident.