On Tuesday, Jeffrey Suazo woke up at 6 a.m. like he did every morning. He got ready for his work as a house painter, said goodbye to his girlfriend Deylin, and drove away, his family said.
But this morning was different in a key way — he left his house in the 600 block of Rose Avenue in St. Paul at the same time as Victor Rodriguez, a tenant from Honduras living on the first floor. Soon, Suazo found himself pursued by federal agents who were apparently looking for Rodriguez.
Suazo fled back home, his family said, prompting an hourslong standoff and drawing more than 200 protesters who clashed with federal agents and St. Paul police officers.
A day later, state and city officials have promised an investigation into how the operation devolved into a clash with law enforcement that led to tear-gas and other nonlethal munitions that sent at least one photojournalist to the hospital.
Federal immigration officials have filed a criminal complaint, charging Suazo with assaulting a federal officer. But confusion and questions still swirl around what exactly happened and why he was swept into the operation.
Family members spoke to Sahan Journal through a translator on Wednesday, sharing their account of what led to Suazo’s arrest. They asked to use their first names, citing safety concerns.
Suazo, 26, came to the United States four years ago from Honduras fleeing persecution. He had been living in the East Side house for a year with his girlfriend Deylin, her 6-year-old sister Siamy, their mother Maria, and his pregnant sister-in-law Daniela, family members said.
Jeffrey Suazo, 26, came to the United States four years ago from Honduras fleeing persecution. He was arrested by federal agents on Nov. 25, 2025, in St. Paul. Credit: Provided
On Tuesday morning, he left for work in his car at the same time as Victor Rodriguez, a tenant from Honduras living on the first floor of the house. Soon after he left the house, Rodriguez was pursued and arrested by what Suazo described to Deylin and his sister-in-law Daniela as federal agents in three cars.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said Rodriguez illegally entered the U.S. after being previously removed from the country and had previous charges of domestic abuse and disorderly conduct.
In a criminal complaint against Suazo filed after the federal operation Tuesday, ICE deportation officer Benjamin Jorgenson said agents were surveilling the Rose Avenue house when they saw Rodriguez leave around 7:45 a.m. and get into a white pickup truck. Suazo left at the same time and got into his Toyota Corolla, also parked outside.
Officers surrounded both vehicles in unmarked cars and turned on their flashers, the criminal complaint said. Suazo then squeezed past agents’ vehicles, leading Jorgenson to pursue him with lights flashing. A half-block later, Suazo “suddenly jerked his vehicle to the left, striking my vehicle,” Jorgenson said in the complaint.
Deylin said that during Rodriguez’s arrest, one of the agents from the three cars pointed at Suazo, who was dressed in his painter’s clothes. “That’s when he tried to find a way out,” she said.
Suazo drove back to the safety of his house, but was pursued by the three cars. He entered his garage through the back alley, where agents deliberately rammed his vehicle, Suazo told Deylin after he got into the house.
The family said soon after Suazo came into the house, the agents surrounded the house.
On his way in, Suazo forgot to lock one of the doors. At least two agents would later enter the first floor of the house, now vacant as Rodriguez was the only occupant, through that same door, the family said. “We started to hear the wooden floors creak and we could hear two voices from below,” said Daniela. “That’s when the manipulation tactics and the insults started,” she said.
According to their account, the agents tried to determine the number of people inside by calling out “Señora, señora.” They said the agents even mentioned Deylin’s 6-year-old sister Siamy, asking what the little girl would think when she returned from school.
They added that a male agent taunted Suazo in halting Spanish, calling him “poco hombre” for hiding and for putting his girlfriend at risk. “And just like mocking, you know, and singing, like in a horror movie, saying, ‘Jeffrey, come out, we’re gonna get you one way or another.’ That was nerve-wracking,” Daniela said. They added that a female agent said that they were arresting Suazo for missing his court date, but the family said that he did not have any ongoing court proceedings.
Tanisha Santiago cries as her family member is led out in handcuffs during a raid where officers from the St. Paul Police Department and Federal Agents clashed with protesters outside of a house on Rose Street in St. Paul on November 25, 2025. Credit: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal
Suazo was in a room with Deylin while Daniela and Deylin’s mother, Maria, were in other rooms, communicating with each other and a team from the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) through messages for advice. They were locked in their rooms for five hours without food, afraid to even use the bathroom.
They were watching from their window as more and more uniformed agents gathered on the street outside their house. “Jeffrey was scared,” Deylin said, “he started crying, and he was so scared to the point where he wanted to leave the house and give in to the officers.”
Over the next hour, dozens of neighbors and community organizers arrived to confront the federal agents. According to protestors, St. Paul police showed up to the scene a little after 10 a.m. and blocked the street to traffic. St Paul Council Vice President Hwa Jeong Kim said that one of the protestors was slammed on the sidewalk by St. Paul police, according to MPR. That person was taken to the backyard of the house along with two other protestors.
Suazo was told not to leave by legal advisers over the phone because the agents did not present a warrant. “They shouted through the stairs that they would say that Jeffrey was the one that crashed into the agents so that they could get a warrant,” Deylin said.
Even though the agents told the community organizers that they had a warrant for one person in the house, Suazo’s family said that their advocates didn’t yet have a warrant from the federal agents.
As scores showed up to protest the federal raid, St. Paul police closed off the perimeter in front of the house with yellow tape, using pepper spray to disperse protestors.
“When the St. Paul police started dispersing people and moving the line back, the agents then started shouting, “See, they’re leaving. They don’t care about you guys, they’re just here to put on a show,” Deylin said. “I was really scared.”
Daniela and Maria added that they were worried the agents would break in. “I was worried for my daughter, worried for everybody in the house,” Maria said. “What if they just forcibly come in? What if they break the doors? What do we do?”
At a Wednesday news conference held at St. Paul nonprofit Indigenous Roots, Executive Director Mary Anne Ligeralde Quiroz said agents had threatened to throw pepper balls into the house and break open the doors.
On Tuesday, Quiroz and acquaintances of the family were communicating with a Homeland Security Task Force officer. The officer said they would leave the rest of the family unharmed if Suazo turned himself in.
“I can’t say it’s this one, but normally, like, if we were to come into contact with somebody that doesn’t have status here, that would be a club-in situation,” the officer told Quiroz. “If that person freely comes out, they will not touch the rest of the family,” Tanisha Santiago, a relative of the family, said.
Daniela said that Jeffrey spoke to a lawyer over the phone. “That was the window of time to be able to leave the premises,” she said.
Deylin, who has been in a relationship with Suazo for five years and knows him from Honduras, said she wanted to go with him. “It was just a very intense, heavy, intimate moment for them,” Daniela said on Deylin’s behalf. “She was crying on the floor. She was distraught,” she said.
Before turning himself in, Suazo hugged each one of them goodbye, including his two cats.
After five hours of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, Suazo was escorted out of the house at midday by federal agents, followed by two protestors who were also detained.
Federal agents arrest Jeffrey Suazo in a home on the 600 block of Rose Avenue in St. Paul on Nov. 25, 2025. Credit: Aaron Nesheim | Sahan Journal
Suazo’s family never expected that immigration agents would one day knock on their door. “We had only ever heard about it at businesses and public spaces, we had never heard that agents were actually forcing their way into people’s homes,” Daniela and Maria said. “It was like a real shock in a moment of being checked into reality as to what’s going on,” Maria added.
Deylin knows Suazo to be a loving, caring partner. He is also the breadwinner of the house.
“He is just really important to the household,” Daniela said. “He is someone who has no vices, he’s not on the streets causing trouble or hanging out with people. He goes to work and comes home and does everything together as a family. If they need to go wash clothes, they all go to the laundromat together. He is such a pillar in the household because we don’t work, and so he was the one who would help pay for things, you know, like, ‘Do you guys want food? Let’s all get food together.’”
The family is now raising money for Suazo’s legal assistance. They hope that Suazo comes back home without charges, and is met with justice.
“They are painting Jeffrey as something he’s not. They’re calling him somebody who’s violated somebody like, plastering his face, coming out [of the house] crying… We want to make sure Jeffrey’s life and who he is is heard and that his name is not sullied, and portrayed as who he is, as we know him,” Daniela said.
“We also just want to be in a house that’s safe,” Maria said. “We want to be somewhere where we don’t have the fear that this is going to happen again, because we don’t feel safe in our house right now.”
Staff reporter Becky Z. Dernbach contributed to this report.