'Handcuffed me, used N-word': Somali woman Nasra Ahmed explains how she was detained by ICE

A St. Paul woman who is a US citizen said she was illegally detained last week by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, speaking on Wednesday at a news conference at the Minnesota Capitol.

Nasra Ahmed, 23, said she stepped out of her St. Paul apartment on Jan. 14 when several ICE officers surrounded her and demanded her identification. State Rep. Samakab Hussein, a St. Paul Democrat who attended Wednesday’s news conference, said similar calls about such ICE activity were coming in from the community. “This needs to stop,” he added.




A video recorded by Nasra’s neighbours showed more than a dozen officers surrounding and handcuffing her, then forcing her into their vehicle. Nasra said the agents escalated the situation while she was trying to produce her ID, pinning her down, handcuffing her, and shoving her into the vehicle, bruising her face. She said the agents injured her by pressing their knees and elbows into her back, and that they called her a racial slur as they handcuffed her.

"They kidnapped me. They took me. They arrested and detained me for two days, and I was put in the county jail. ICE came. They came out of their cars. They asked me to see my id. And while they were asking me to see the id, that man, he called me. He called me the N word. They pushed me hard. They used a lot of violence. My body still hurts. I got a concussion. It's really hard for me to speak because of that concussion," Ahmad said.

She was taken to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, then transferred to the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River. “I’m not a criminal, but they shackled my legs and handcuffed me as if I were a criminal,” she said. She broke down in tears as she shared her experience. “This is a scar that I will carry for the rest of my life,” she said.

When Nasra was detained, her aunt called her father, Mohamed Ahmed, and told him his daughter had been taken by ICE. Mohamed said on Wednesday that his daughter’s detainment was not immigration enforcement but rather an operation targeting Somali Americans. Upon learning that she had been detained, he tried to find her with Hussein’s help. They called Ramsey County, which told them to try the Whipple Building, but she was transferred to Elk River before they could do so. “I couldn’t get any information about her for a whole 24 hours,” Mohamed Ahmed said on Wednesday.

Once her family learned where Nasra was being held, her father took her passport and birth certificate to the jail to prove she is a US citizen.

A bandage covered the right side of Nasra’s face at the news conference. “Everything hurts,” she said, pointing to her face, neck, legs and wrists. She said she was told she sustained a concussion when the agents slammed her onto the floor.

Nasra was among many US citizens and lawful immigrants who were unlawfully detained in Minnesota since December. In January, the federal govt increased the number of ICE and Border Patrol agents working in Minnesota to about 3,000, leading to more widespread stops, interrogations and detentions. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that hundreds more ICE agents may be sent to Minnesota.

As tension between protesters and ICE agents grew across the Twin Cities, President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy military force against Minnesotans.

Nasra said being American was much more than ICE’s racial assumptions. “I’m Somali, but also American,” she said.