By Paul Walsh
The Minnesota Star Tribune
MINNEAPOLIS — Police in Plymouth are crediting two ICE agents with racing to the rescue and saving the life of a 4-year-old boy who had been underwater for several minutes in a hotel pool.
The swift actions by the off-duty agents occurred in the evening on Feb. 20 at Ramada by Wyndham Plymouth near Interstate 494 and Hwy. 55, according to police.
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Police sent an email to the agents’ superiors within the next eight hours, noting that “without the quick response and professional actions of [the agents], the outcome of this event would have likely been tragic.”
The email, sent by police Sgt. Quincy Grabau and released to the Minnesota Star Tribune, expressed “thanks and gratitude for the efforts of [the agents] in saving the life of a 4-year-old boy. Much more than being in the right place at the right time, the ability to work effectively and efficiently in a chaotic and emotional scene is admirable.”
The email given to the Star Tribune had the agents’ names redacted. Police spokeswoman Heather Haapoja explained that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told her department the agents were considered undercover officers.
The police email gave this account of the rapidly unfolding circumstances:
Police were alerted about 8:25 p.m. that a child jumped in the pool to retrieve a toy, went under and “was not breathing and showed no signs of life.”
Witnesses yelled for help in the restaurant, Bombay Pizza Kitchen, that adjoins the hotel while the boy remained underwater. The agents “without hesitation” headed for the pool.
Once the boy was pulled out of the water, the agents performed CPR on the child for several minutes. He had been submerged for five minutes while family and others were making the scene “difficult to manage.”
Police officers arrived and took over CPR and other lifesaving measures. About 10 minutes later, the child started breathing again. Emergency responders took the boy to a nearby hospital, where he was “awake and alert.”
Grabau’s email noted that he expressed his gratitude to one of the agents during a phone call, but he “tried to downplay the efforts of him” and his colleague.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted the email online on Feb. 25 and called the agents the “best of the best,” playing off the federal government’s stated mission of rooting out the “worst of the worst” during its continuing immigration enforcement crackdown in Minnesota.
Deputy Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement that “I want to take a moment to commend the heroism and swift action taken by these agents to save the life of a sweet, innocent child. If our agents had not been there and stepped up, this would have been a tragic outcome.”
It was about a month earlier when two women being detained by federal agents said they gave emergency medical aid to one of the agents with them in an SUV heading for the Whipple Federal Building.
Tippy Amundson, 39, and Heather Zemien, 55, said they were sitting handcuffed in the back seat of the three-row SUV on Jan. 22 when an agent in the front passenger seat was having a seizure. They spoke up immediately, telling the driver to pull over and telling the agents to call 911. When nothing happened, they repeated it, louder and more urgently.
Eventually, the women said, their cuffs came off so they could tend to the agent.
By the time emergency medical responders arrived, the women had been holding the agent steady for several minutes. They were detained but acting as first responders to the man who had detained them.
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