Minnesota Stands with Ilhan, Because Her Door Is Every Door
A Minnesota family woke up to federal agents at the door. Ilhan Omar is a mom and a neighbor. She came here as a refugee kid, went to school in Minneapolis, and raised her children here. Every parent in this state knows what a pre-dawn knock would feel like in their own home. This raid is an abuse of power, and Minnesota sees it for what it is.
This is the next step on a long road. For a decade Donald Trump has aimed his rhetoric at Ilhan, and death threats followed. This year he widened the target to Somali Minnesotans and to our whole state. He sent thousands of armed ICE agents into the Twin Cities, and two of our neighbors were killed in broad daylight. Last week he told his supporters to "fight back" against Somali Americans. Now agents from his administration have raided her home.
Minnesota already knows the cost of political violence. We are still grieving the assasination of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, survived an assasination attempt in their own home. After what this state has endured, every leader has a responsibility to reject rhetoric that turns neighbors into enemies. We refuse to accept threats, intimidation, or violence as the price of participating in public life.
During Metro Surge, our neighbors did what citizens do: they watched their government and recorded what it did. They were teachers and retirees, parents and students. More than 500 U.S. citizens were detained while observing or protesting. Agents broke car windows, held observers for hours in the Whipple Federal Building, and followed some of them home to show they knew where they lived. Filming law enforcement is a constitutional right, and they treated it as a crime.
Renee Good and Alex Pretti were our neighbors. Renee was a Minneapolis woman sitting in her car. Alex was an ICU nurse who cared for veterans at the VA. Federal agents killed them both in January, and before any investigation began, the most powerful people in our government called them domestic terrorists. Video from multiple angles tells a different story. Then came the stalling. Justice Department leaders turned the investigation of Renee's killing away from the agent who shot her and toward Renee herself and her widow. FBI and federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned rather than go along. For more than six months, federal officials withheld body camera footage, witness statements, and Renee's own car from Minnesota investigators. Nine months later, both families are still waiting for justice. When a government can call a nurse a terrorist, it can call any of us a terrorist.
Then they came for organizers, churchgoers, and reporters. Fifteen Minnesotans face federal conspiracy charges for writing, speaking, raising money for one another, and documenting license plates so families could find safety. In St. Paul, people who protested ICE at Cities Church were charged under the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, journalists among them. These are our neighbors. So is Ilhan. Whether someone serves in Congress or records an arrest on their block, their rights and their family’s safety must matter to all of us.
The timing is the message. Three weeks before an election with Ilhan on the ballot, this raid sends a signal to every voter who looks like her, prays like her, or votes like her. Make an example of one neighbor to frighten everyone else: that is the fascist playbook.
The investigation is the punishment. Trump uses the Justice Department against the people who stand in his way, and court after court has thrown out his charges. He keeps going because the process itself drains time, money, and peace. Ilhan has the resources of a congresswoman to fight back. Most families facing this have a lawyer's number on the fridge, if that.
The government belongs to the people. It must serve our communities and answer to us. Every Minnesotan has the right to speak, organize, protest, and vote without being targeted for exercising those rights. Political disagreements belong in public debate and at the ballot box. No family should have to hear violence or retaliation because of what they believe, where they were born, or whom they support.
We stand with Ilhan Omar and with the MN15. We demand justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We remember Meslissa and Mark Hortman and stand with the Hoffman family. And we stand with the neighbors whose names never make the headlines, whose families are living with fear and whose lives have been turned upside down. Our solidarity cannot begin and end with the people the whole country recognizes.
None of this becomes acceptable because it keeps happening. Each attack on a neighbor’s rights demands that we show up, speak out, and insist on accountability. We will organize, protect one another, and carry that resolve to the ballot box and beyond. We do not have to wait for the knock at our down door to stand together.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s door is every door. We stand with her.
Signed,
Unidos MN
Monarca Action
CTUL
SEIU Local 26