Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said that immigration officials pulled over her son over the weekend and demanded he prove his citizenship.
“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 Sunday morning in an interview on local news station WCCO.
The incident comes after Omar sent a letter Friday to the Department of Homeland Security accusing federal agents of “blatant racial profiling” and “an egregious level of unnecessary force” in its Minneapolis operations.
“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,” Omar wrote. “Rather than focusing the operation on individuals with judicial warrants, ICE officers have been stopping Black and Brown Minnesotans on the street or in public spaces at random, demanding to see their IDs.”
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President Donald Trump and many of his allies have singled out Omar, Congress’ first and only Somali representative, in recent weeks as part of a larger targeted campaign against Somali immigrants living in Minnesota.
Earlier this month, Trump referred to Somalia as “garbage” and announced the end of Temporary Protected Status for Somali immigrants living in Minnesota. In announcing the decision, administration officials cited a massive recent federal fraud case involving some Somalis in Minnesota accused of stealing from a COVID-era government assistance program.
Omar fled a civil war in Somalia when she was eight years old, arriving in the U.S. in 1995 after spending four years in a Kenyan refugee camp, according to her biography. She earned her American citizenship in 2000.
Last month, Trump told Omar to “go back” to Somalia in a post on Truth Social and in subsequent weeks repeated the unsubstantiated claim that Omar married her brother to help him gain U.S. citizenship.
“His obsession with me is creepy,” Omar posted to Bluesky in response to Trump repeating the claims during a Cabinet meeting. “I hope he gets the help he desperately needs.”
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