Aliya Rahman was detained by ICE after refusing to move her car during an enforcement operation.
Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) will be bringing two individuals to President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday evening who she says were wrongfully detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. One of her guests, Aliya Rahman, is a career left-wing activist who was detained by ICE after refusing to move her car during an enforcement operation.
Omar says the experiences of those two people, and her other two guests, “reflect how ICE’s reckless actions in Minnesota through ‘Operation Metro Surge’ have devastated Minnesotans’ safety and economic security.”
Omar’s office describes Rahman as a “Bangladeshi-American software engineer, a resident of South Minneapolis, and a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury.”
The “Squad” member says Rahman was driving to a doctor’s appointment on January 13 “when her window was smashed in by DHS agents, she was forcibly removed from her vehicle, and she was violently detained by federal agents who had caused a traffic jam despite her repeated statements that she was disabled.”
“She was taken to Whipple Detention Center where she witnessed inhumane cruelty against detainees from federal immigration agents,” Omar’s press release adds. “During her detention, Rahman experienced severe medical neglect and violence at the hands of ICE agents, requiring hospitalization for assault at Hennepin County Medical Center upon her release. Rahman is now calling for ICE to face legal accountability for their aggression against civilians.”
The Department of Homeland Security refuted Omar’s version of events in a statement to National Review.
A DHS spokesperson said ICE agents were executing an arrest warrant for an illegal immigrant with a final order of removal in the Park Avenue area of Minneapolis.
“As officers carried out their law enforcement duties, a significant crowd surrounded them and began impeding law enforcement operations— a federal crime,” the spokesperson said.
Rahman, whom DHS described as an “agitator,” was said to have “ignored multiple commands by an officer to move her vehicle away from the scene” leading law enforcement to arrest her for obstruction.
Video of the incident shows agents were trying to clear the streets of rowdy protesters when they yelled out to Rahman to keep driving. After she disobeyed commands to move on, one agent smashed her passenger window as a second agent opened Rahman’s driver side door.
Rahman shouted that she was “disabled” and “just trying to get to the doctor” as she was pulled from the car, handcuffed, and carried away.
Attorneys for Rahman at the MacArthur Justice Center said in a statement last month that she is “lucky to be alive today after being dragged from her car by masked agents two blocks from where Renee Good was shot and killed.”
“Federal agents demanded that she move her car, but she had nowhere to move it,” added the statement from Alexa Van Brunt, the director of MacArthur’s Illinois office. “She identified herself as an autistic and disabled person but agents did not de-escalate or stop abusing her. What started as a regular trip to see her medical provider ended in violence, incarceration at the Whipple Detention Center, and emergency medical treatment.”
DHS, meanwhile, has also rejected Rahman’s claims about her treatment after her arrest.
“Any claim she was denied medical care is FALSE and just another smear leading to a 1,300% increase in assaults and 3,200% increase in vehicular attacks. Reminder: Obstruction law enforcement is a federal crime and a felony,” the statement added.
“Secretary Noem has been clear: Any rioter who obstructs or assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Obstructing federal law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime,” DHS concluded.
The New York Post previously uncovered Rahman’s past history of “LGBT and racial justice” activism. Rahman has over a decade of history connecting her with the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the report.
Rahman is a “community-focused security practitioner,” according to her LinkedIn. The 43-year-old also describes herself on her X profile as “your friendly neighborhood deniable asset.”
“Her work is informed by a background in legislative, electoral, and community organizing for racial and criminal justice campaigns, 15 years of software development for the social justice movement, and a former life as an educator and researcher working in public education and workforce development,” according to her bio for the New America’s Open Technology Institute, where she previously served as a fellow working on a project about police body cameras.
She also told Tech for Social Justice that she was pushed to become “pretty involved in organizing” while she was in a relationship with a transgender-identifying person, saying her activism was borne out of “necessity.”
Rahman has worked for a number of different advocacy groups, including Center for Community Change, Equality Ohio (an LGBT advocacy group) and Code for Progress. She also served as the director of movement technology at Wellstone, a Minnesota-based nonprofit “that trains the community activists and political leaders that broadly make up the progressive Left.”
The alleged obstruction incident wasn’t Rahman’s first run-in with the law; according to the New York Post, she was also arrested several times more than a decade ago. She previously pleaded guilty to criminal trespassing and driving under the influence charges in two separate Ohio incidents. She was also charged with driving without insurance in Illinois.
Omar’s other guest, Mubashir Hussen, is a 20-year-old U.S. citizen and Minneapolis resident. Omar’s office says he was walking in the city’s Cedar-Riverside neighborhood on December 9 when “several masked federal immigration officers stopped” him.
“ICE agents refused to check his ID before detaining him, despite Hussen repeating ‘I’m a citizen’ multiple times,” according to Omar’s press release. “The agents took Hussen to the Whipple Federal Building, where he was shackled and fingerprinted. Hussen was released after showing a photo of his passport card to an individual at the Whipple building.”
“On behalf of Mubashir Hussen and two other community members whose constitutional rights were violated by federal immigration officers, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the Trump Administration to end ICE and CBP’s practice of suspicionless stops, warrantless arrests, and racial profiling of Minnesotans,” she added.
DHS tells National Review that ICE officers were “investigating criminal immigration violations in Minneapolis near a location that has a high level of criminal activity” when agents encountered Hussen.
“The officers were having a consensual conversation with a suspected illegal alien,” DHS said in a statement. “At that time, a second male individual walked out of a nearby restaurant, turned around, and fled from law enforcement. Having reasonable suspicion — as protected under the U.S. Constitution — officers gave chase and caught up with the individual, who violently resisted officers and refused to answer questions.”
“A large crowd of agitators descended and began to threaten the officers,” the statement added. “For their safety, they temporarily detained the individual to safely finish asking their questions. Once officers finished their questioning, he was promptly released.”
In a video of the incident, protesters surround agents as they put Hussen into a headlock and handcuff him. As they begin loading Hussen into a law enforcement vehicle, surrounded by screaming protesters, he appears to shout, “I’m a citizen, I’m a citizen!”
Now, Hussen’s family has created a GoFundMe looking to raise $50k to support Hussen “after a traumatic ICE detention.”
“Although Mubashir did not leave with visible injuries, the emotional, psychological, and physical effects have been severe and long-lasting,” the GoFundMe says. “Since the detention, my brother has experienced intense anxiety and fear in public spaces, difficulty sleeping and persistent stress, emotional exhaustion and ongoing back pain and chronic physical tension that began after being forced to the ground and pushed into a metal pole. His body continues to carry the impact of that moment, and his sense of safety has been deeply shaken.”
The family writes that they are hoping to raise funds for “trauma-informed mental health therapy and counseling, Medical care for ongoing physical pain and stress-related symptoms and basic living and recovery-related expenses while he focuses on healing.”
Minneapolis officials, for their part, apologized to Hussen over the ordeal.
“I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say ‘police.’ That’s embarrassing,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told the man during a press conference in December.
“Taken into custody for no reason at all, in clear violation of law and the Constitution of the United States for simply walking down the street and looking like he’s Somali,” said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat.
Finally, Omar has also invited Mary Granlund, the chair of the Columbia Heights School Board who has worked with school staff to “protect their community” after Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old student, was taken into ICE detention with his father. The school staffers are “conducting daily patrols, working to connect detained children and families with legal assistance, and coordinating food deliveries for families too scared to leave their homes,” according to Omar’s office.
While several news outlets ran stories suggesting ICE agents detained the 5-year-old boy on his way home from preschool in an effort to lure his father out for arrest, DHS was quick to correct the record: ICE agents “stayed with a child who was abandoned by his father — an illegal alien from Ecuador.”
“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administration’s immigration enforcement,” the agency said.
And the congresswoman’s final guest is Gerardo Orozco Guzman, the son of Eustaquio Orozco Verdusco, a workers’ rights organizer who was detained by ICE agents on January 9 and taken to Camp East Montana in El Paso, Tx. A petition calling for Orozco Verdusco’s release makes no mention of his legal status.