A Minneapolis man born in Liberia who has no record of serious crimes shared details of what he said was a frightening and chaotic experience after masked and heavily armed federal immigration agents illegally broke down his door.
Agents arrested him while his daughter, a few days shy of her 10th birthday, was inside. His wife and an 11-year-old niece were also inside the north Minneapolis home. Authorities later released Gibson only to detain him briefly for a second time on Friday.
Speaking at a news conference Saturday alongside his attorney, Garrison Gibson, 38, said his family was asleep when agents pounded on the door of their home around 9 a.m. on Jan. 11. He said that they asked him to come outside to talk, but he refused to open the door and demanded to see a warrant.
The agents left but returned later with a larger group, who parked unmarked vehicles behind and in front of his home. Word of the impending raid spread quickly among Gibson’s neighbors, and a large group of protesters showed up to blow whistles, bang drums and record video. The footage shows several masked agents keeping the crowd at bay — using pepper spray at times — as a half dozen others walk onto the porch.
The agents smashed open the door with a battering ram as Gibson’s wife Teyana Brown recorded her own video and asserted her rights. After illegally entering, one agent is seen briefly leveling his rifle as another shines a flashlight in Brown’s face.
“Can you put the guns down? There’s kids in this house,” Brown said. “Show the warrant first!”
Sitting beside her husband at the Saturday news conference, Brown said that the agents did not give any warning before breaking in. She added that it took several days to find someone to repair the door, which she had to hold closed with exercise weights for several days to keep out the winter air. Brown said that she paid a contractor $700 to fix the door but has yet to find the money to repair the sheetrock around it.
Brown said that the agents did not show her a warrant until after they put Gibson in handcuffs. But the warrant was not signed by a federal judge, which is required under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment to enter a person’s home without their consent.
The paper that an agent left with Brown was an administrative warrant signed by DHS Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer Ariel Valdez. This type of warrant only allows agents to arrest Gibson if they encounter him in public; it does not allow them to enter his home.
Agents did not let Gibson change into warm clothing or put on a coat before taking him out into the 16-degree winter air. They put him in a government SUV wearing slippers, shorts and a hoodie as Brown begged the agents to release him.
“I felt helpless, like I couldn’t do nothing to help her, because I was basically taken for no reason,” Gibson said.
ICE agents take ‘trophy pictures,’ pack detainees into holding cells
Gibson said that after they arrived at the Whipple Federal Building near MSP airport, where ICE has a detention facility, the agents paused and forced him to take part in an act of ritual humiliation.
“They took trophy pictures with their personal phones. Like one stood by me on the right side of me. One stood on the left side of me. And they went, like, thumbs up and took pictures with their personal phones,” he said, adding that agents took similar photos with other detainees.
Inside, Gibson said that agents cut off his ankle monitor. Another ICE agent later called Gibson’s cell phone to inquire about his whereabouts; Brown answered.
“[The agent on the phone] is like, ‘Where’s Garrison?’ And I’m like ‘huh?’” said Brown. “‘You took him.’”
Inside the detention center, Gibson said that officers put him in a bare, metal holding cell about the size of a small conference room with around 40 other detainees. Their legs were shackled. He said that the cell was cold and they shared a single toilet that offered no privacy. Gibson says that one person in the cell appeared to have scabies.
In response to a petition from Gibson’s attorney Marc Prokosch, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan on Monday ordered ICE not to remove Gibson from Minnesota, away from his family and lawyer.
But later Monday, officers put Gibson on a plane along with other shackled detainees and flew them to a detention center in El Paso, Texas. After Prokosch asked ICE about this violation of the judge’s order, an agent acknowledged the error and had Gibson flown back to Minnesota, where he was held in the Freeborn County Jail.
ICE released Gibson on Thursday following another judicial order, but briefly detained him a second time when he returned with Prokosch to the federal building for a routine check-in on Friday morning.
Prokosch said that his client’s immigration status falls into a gray area. Authorities handed Gibson a removal order in 2009 based on a now-expunged minor marijuana conviction, but the government has allowed him to live and work in the United States provided that he check in regularly with ICE. Prokosch said that Gibson followed the rules to a T.
“We have the sheet that says he goes in every three months or six months or whatever and they say ‘OK, is your address correct?’ Yes. ‘Is your phone number correct?’ Yes. ‘Have you done anything else bad?’ No. OK, we’ll see you again in three or six months.”
According to court records, Gibson’s most recent check-in with ICE was on Dec. 29, less than two weeks before masked gunmen from the agency illegally broke down his door.
In a statement provided to MPR News on Saturday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin calls Gibson a “criminal illegal alien” with a history of felonies. But the agency did not respond to a request for evidence that he committed any serious crimes. Court records show only misdemeanors from more than a decade ago.
In his ruling Thursday ordering Gibson’s release, Bryan also found that ICE never gave Gibson any explanation of what circumstances had changed in his immigration status to justify his detention. Bryan also ruled that Gibson may seek to have the government pay his attorney’s fees.
In the same statement McLaughlin called the order “an activist judge’s ruling.”
Gibson said he felt a “sigh of relief” getting back on the plane to Minnesota. He returned home Thursday in time for his daughter’s birthday and hugged everyone, including his elderly neighbor whom an ICE agent struck with pepper spray while they witnessed his arrest.
Gibson said that he’ll continue fighting the government’s efforts to deport him to Liberia, a country he hasn’t visited since he fled a civil war there when he was 6 years old.