Minn. Rep. Ilhan Omar is no stranger to attacks from the Trump administration over her citizenship, immigration status and her native country of Somalia. But now, the congresswoman is pumping the breaks after she said her son was the latest target of ICE attacks.
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We previously told you President Donald Trump ramped up immigration presence in the state of Minnesota. Specifically, he’s pledged to go after Somali-born migrants, even ending Temporary Protected Status for thousands. Rep. Omar is at the center of the fight between Trump and Somali communities in Minnesota, and she’s making it clear that nobody is safe from Trump’s attacks… not even the son of a well-respected U.S. politician.
The Democrat spoke to Esme Murphy on WCCO Sunday Morning, revealing her son was detained by ICE. “Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents, and once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go,” Omar said.
The congresswoman said her son always keeps his passport on him– seemingly in case of dire situations like these. He reportedly encountered ICE once before, despite being an American citizen. Omar said ICE had entered a mosque where her son was praying. Fortunately, the encounter ended without incident. Still, as a mother to a Black boy and a politician with an insider’s perspective, Omar can’t help but to worry about her son and others in her community.
She admitted to having “to remind him 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.”
It’s unclear if Omar’s son was targeted because of his relationship to Omar or if he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the politician has previously alleged that Trump’s ICE presence in Minnesota was a direct result of her ongoing beef with him.
In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, Rep. Omar blasted Trump officials for “blatant racial profiling” and “an egregious level of unnecessary force.” She said, “It is clear to me that this surge came in direct response to Trump’s racist comments about Somali people, and about me in particular.”
The president has been vocal about his distain for the Somali-born representative. “I look at somebody that comes from Somalia, who, where they don’t have anything — they don’t have police, they don’t have military, they don’t have anything,” Trump told Fox News last month. “All they have is crime — and she [Rep. Omar] comes in and tells us how to run our country.”
Trump’s view of Somalia has been criticized as a narrow and inaccurate depiction of the East African nation. The Democrat’s family fled their native country during the Somalian Civil War in 1991, according to her Congress bio. They were granted asylum before moving to Virginia. Omar became a U.S. citizen in 2000 and the first African-born refugee to serve in Congress in 2019.
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