Minnesota citizens detained by ICE are left rattled, even weeks later

It’s a video many saw on social media soon after it happened: Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, dragging a woman out of her car and forcing her to the ground.

The woman in the video is Aliya Rahman, a Bangladeshi-American and a U.S. citizen. The day she was arrested, Rahman was on her way to the doctor, when she came across an ICE operation and a group of people protesting. She said the ICE officers told her to move her car, but the scene was chaotic and she received multiple instructions at once.

The Department of Homeland Security said in an earlier statement they arrested Rahman because she “ignored multiple commands.” But Rahman, who is autistic and also recovering from a traumatic brain injury, says it sometimes takes her a moment to understand auditory commands. Before she knew it, the officers were carrying her away by her limbs.

“I thought I might well die,” Rahman said. She was placed in an SUV with three ICE officers.

“I heard the laughing driver radio in, ‘we’re bringing in a body,'” she recalled. It took her a second to realize they meant her.

In recent days, federal officials have signaled a willingness to reduce the large number of immigration agents in Minnesota, though they say any decrease will depend on state and local cooperation. Even if a draw-down occurs, they’ll leave behind a changed community, including many citizens questioned and detained by immigration officers in recent weeks.

Rahman was taken to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where immigration agents have brought detainees before releasing them or sending them out of state. While at Whipple, Rahman experienced a severe headache, and asked for medical care for more than an hour. Eventually, she passed out. She says she woke up in a downtown hospital, where doctors told her she had suffered a concussion.

Her arrest was more than two weeks ago, but she can’t shake the fear.

“I do not feel safe being in my own home, driving these streets,” she said. “And even then, I am in a significantly better place than a lot of the other folks who have been detained.”

Rahman is far from the only U.S. citizen in Minnesota with such a story.

ChongLy Scott Thao, a Hmong man and U.S. citizen, was pulled from his home wearing only sandals, underwear and a blanket around his shoulders. Thao said the immigration agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and photographed him. He told reporters he feared they would beat him. They later brought him back to his house.

Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a Somali-American and U.S. citizen, also was detained by ICE.

“I wasn’t even outside for mere seconds before I seen a masked person running at me full speed,” Hussen said at a news conference last month. “He tackled me. I told him, ‘I’m a U.S. citizen.’ He didn’t seem to care. He dragged me outside to the snow while I was handcuffed, restrained, helpless and he pushed me to the ground.”

Hussen is now suing the Trump administration as part of a class action lawsuit, accusing it of racial profiling. According to the lawsuit, ICE eventually released Hussen outside the Whipple building, telling him to walk the seven miles back to where they detained him.

In a statement to NPR, the Department of Homeland Security said “allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.”

But Walter Olson, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says many legal experts are coming to a different conclusion.

“This is no longer just a series of accidents that could have been due to someone being badly trained or being a bad apple. This is a systematic assault on constitutional rights,” he said.

The Fourth Amendment protects people from being stopped without reasonable suspicion and arresting without probable cause, a higher standard. Courts in the U.S. have decided skin color alone does not meet either bar.

Last fall, however, the Supreme court ruled that “apparent ethnicity” could be used to determine reasonable suspicion, as long as there were other factors too. Legal experts say the decision may give ICE more discretion.

Olson says even if the Minnesota immigration crackdown eases, these same concerns could arise elsewhere. He noted that judges ruled against the federal government during its crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland.

“And they were not led to call off or rethink the campaign. They just regrouped and came back to another state,” Olson said.

Even citizens who were not arrested but still questioned are rattled after run-ins with immigration officers. Luis Escoto, the owner of El Taquito Taco Shop in West St. Paul, said immigration agents surrounded his wife Irma’s car in their restaurant’s alley when she went out to get more lettuce before the dinner hour. Escoto ran outside.

“I said, ‘Hey, hold on. That’s just my wife,'” Escoto said. “They said, ‘We need proof of U.S. citizenship,’ and I said, ‘She’s a U.S. citizen.'”

Luis and Irma Escoto are both citizens. Escoto showed one of the officers their passport cards, which he still had in his wallet after a recent trip to Mexico.

“He said, ‘Well, next time she should carry that all the time, because if she doesn’t have proof of citizenship we’re going to arrest her,'” Escoto recalled.

The immigration agents left. But weeks later, Escoto is still shaken and angry. Some of his customers are now escorting him and his wife home each night when the restaurant closes.

When he became a citizen 35 years ago, Escoto said he was nervous because the government took away his green card. He asked the judge about it.

“I said, ‘Sir, what happens if the immigration officers stop me?’ And he said ‘Well, today you’re proud to be a United States citizen,'” Escoto said.

The judge told him you don’t need documentation when you’re a citizen. But now, Escoto said, that doesn’t seem so true anymore.