Ilhan Omar said that ICE agents pulled over her son on Saturday and demanded that he show his I.D.
The Somali-American Congresswoman has been a fierce critic of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, drawing the president’s ire in doing so.
Speaking on WCCO Sunday Morning, Omar said that her 20-year-old son was stopped by ICE agents in the very same crackdown that she had been criticizing.
“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,” she said.
She said that her son always carried his passport with him, and accused immigration officers of “racially profiling” Minnesotans while making arrests.
Omar claimed that ICE agents had previously entered a mosque where her son and other Muslim Minnesotans were praying, but left without making any arrests.
Minnesota’s Somali community has been a particular target in the president’s tough anti-immigration measures, with Trump describing migrants from the country as “garbage.” He also claimed that Somali migrants “destroyed our country,” shortly after ICE activities in Minnesota were ramped up with Operation Metro Surge.
So far, the operation has already led to over 400 arrests in Minnesota this month, although an ICE spokesperson told NBC News that the crackdown was not specifically targeting Somali immigrants.
In a letter sent on Friday, Omar claimed that Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, and Todd Lyons, the director of ICE, were using an “egregious level of unnecessary force” in Operation Metro surge.
“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.
Trump has recently escalated his attacks on Omar herself, who moved to the U.S. in 1995. The president has called for Omar to be “thrown the hell out” of the United States and repeated a widely debunked conspiracy theory that she married her brother to gain U.S. citizenship.
Hitting back, she branded Trump as a “national embarrassment,” after he lectured crowds in Pennsylvania about immigration from Somalia.
Omar said that his rhetoric had been ramped up to distract from an uncertain economic outlook for the United States.
“He needs serious help,” she seethed. “Since he has no economic policies to tout, he’s resorting to regurgitating bigoted lies instead.”
The Independent has contacted the DHS for further comment.
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