Man released twice after his dramatic battering-ram arrest

Garrison Gibson is among thousands immigration agents targeted in Minnesota.

- BY JACK BROOK

TEYANA Gibson Brown, with phone, reacts after federal officers arrested her husband, Garrison Gibson.

(JOHN LOCHER Associated Press)

MINNEAPOLIS — A Liberian man who has been shuttled in and out of custody since immigration agents in Minnesota broke down his door with a battering ram was released again Friday, hours after a routine check-in with authorities led to his second arrest.

President Trump, meanwhile, backed off a bit from his threat a day earlier to invoke an 1807 law, the Insurrection Act, to send troops to suppress protests in Minnesota during an unprecedented immigration sweep in the Twin Cities.

"I don’t think there’s any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it, I'd use it,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

Detention whiplash, then freedom

The dramatic initial arrest of Garrison Gibson last weekend was captured on video. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan ruled the arrest unlawful Thursday and freed him, but Gibson was detained again Friday when he appeared at an immigration office.

A few hours later, Gibson was free again, attorney Marc Prokosch said.

“In the words of my client, he said that somebody at ICE said they bleeped up and so they re-released him this afternoon and so he’s out of custody,” Prokosch said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.