Congresswoman Ilhan Omar says ICE agents pulled over her son in Minnesota

Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar told a Minneapolis broadcaster that her son had been stopped over the weekend by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, after Donald Trump ordered an operation targeting the Minnesota city’s Somali population.

“Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by [ICE] agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go,” Omar said on Sunday in an interview with WCCO.

She added that her son, who she did not name, had earlier been praying at a mosque when ICE agents arrived and entered, before leaving without incident. She noted that he “always carries” his passport with him.

Following that encounter, Omar said she told her son, “just how worried I am, because all of these areas that they are talking about are areas where he could possibly find himself in and they are racially profiling, they are looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented.”

Omar, who has represented Minnesota’s largest city in the House of Representatives since 2019, is the first Somali American congresswoman, and a frequent target of attacks from Trump and his allies.

The president recently went on a racist rant against Somalis, calling them “garbage” and saying Omar “should be thrown the hell out of our country”. Omar was born in Somalia but became a US citizen in 2000.

The Trump administration has deployed immigration agents to Minnesota’s Twin Cities area to target undocumented Somalis and Latinos. Last week, Omar sent a letter to Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, and Todd Lyons, the acting ICE director, saying the enforcement, dubbed “Operation Metro Surge”, has resulted in “blatant racial profiling, an egregious level of unnecessary force, and activity that appears designed for social media rather than befitting a law enforcement agency.”