The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing federal immigration authorities in Minnesota of racial profiling and unlawful arrests during a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. The 72-page suit, lodged on Thursday, claims that Somali and Latino communities have been disproportionately targeted, violating the constitutional rights of US citizens.
The lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its secretary, Kristi Noem, along with several Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers as defendants. It describes a 'startling pattern of abuse' that is 'fundamentally altering civic life in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota'. The ACLU alleges that masked federal agents are stopping and arresting people based on race and perceived ethnicity, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.
One plaintiff, 20-year-old Mubashir Khalif Hussen, was detained while walking to lunch in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood last December. Despite stating 'I'm a citizen', agents refused to check his ID, placed him in a headlock, and took him to a federal building where he was shackled, fingerprinted, and denied medical assistance and water. After his release, Hussen was pepper-sprayed by an agent from a moving car while recording ICE activity.
Another plaintiff, 25-year-old Mahamed Eydarus, was shovelling snow with his mother when they were surrounded by plain-clothes federal agents who demanded identification to ensure he was 'not illegal'. The agents allegedly instructed his mother to remove her religious face covering, separated them, and questioned why they were speaking Somali, referring to it as a 'foreign language'. No warrant was presented.
ACLU Minnesota attorney Catherine Ahlin-Halverson stated: 'ICE and CBP's practices are both illegal and morally reprehensible. Federal agents' conduct – sweeping up Minnesotans through racial profiling and unlawful arrests – is a grave violation of Minnesotans' most fundamental rights.' Kate Huddleston, from the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, added: 'The government can't stop and arrest people based on the colour of their skin, or arrest people with no probable cause. These kinds of police-state tactics are contrary to the basic principles of liberty and equality.'
