Rep. Ilhan Omar says son was pulled over by ICE amid Trump’s ‘racial profiling’ of Somalis in Minnesota

“They’re looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented,” Omar told WCCO Sunday Morning.

U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar shared that her son was pulled over by ICE over the weekend amid the Trump Administration’s surge of federal agents in Minnesota targeting Somali residents.

“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 told “WCCO Sunday Morning.”

The Minnesota U.S. representative said her son presented ICE agents with his passport, which he “always carries” with him.

Omar said that, days prior, her son was at a restaurant with friends that they frequent when ICE agents entered while they were praying.

“They’re looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented,” Omar told WCCO.

The encounter with ICE agents comes as Trump has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to scale its federal presence in the Twin Cities, which houses more than 80,000 Somali immigrants–most of whom are U.S. citizens. President Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted Somalis in the state in recent weeks, following a report that revealed a few dozen Somalis there had committed fraud using COVID-19 emergency funds.

“I don’t want them in our country,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Dec.2. The president called Omar and Somalis living in the U.S., “garbage.”

The Trump administration is now being accused of racially profiling Somalis in the area, as it conducts its so-called Operation Metro Surge. While the administration claims it is arresting “the worst of the worst,” in a letter to Homeland Security, Rep. Omar blasted Trump officials for “blatant racial profiling” and “an egregious level of unnecessary force.”

“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 in the letter.

“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,” Omar continued. “It is appalling to witness this unlawful behavior by ICE agents, which echoes some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.”

Omar has called Trump’s repeated personal attacks on her and other Somalis in Minnesota “creepy,” telling WCCO, “It is really disturbing and creepy to have the president of the United States be obsessed with you and those who share your ethnicity.”

“I know that he is deflecting from the failures of his presidency. He’d rather scapegoat us than answer for why people can’t afford their lives [and] why he has not fulfilled his promise of creating a more affordable area,” the U.S. congresswoman said of the president. “He doesn’t want to answer for the possible war crimes of shooting down those boats in the Caribbean. He does not want any conversations about releasing the Epstein files. He wants to continue to protect pedophiles.”

Omar added, “What does he do when he doesn’t want to really answer the question about the failures of his administration? He cues the bigotry, and we know this playbook.”