A 23-year-old woman from St.Paul, Minnesota has recounted her experience being forcibly detained by ICE agents despite being a U.S. citizen.
As reported by Twin Cities Pioneer Press, Nasra Ahmed said she was surrounded by ICE agents in the parking lot outside the apartment complex she lives in, and was shoved to the ground and left with bruises. “I gave them ID since they asked,” she said. “I did everything they asked.” Ahmed, who describes herself as a Black person of Somali descent, is a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, was forcibly detained by the agents and spent two days in their custody before she was released on no charges.
She alleged that one of the agents called her a racial slur during the incident. “They used a lot of force to arrest me,” said Nasra, who noted she is 5-foot-4-inches and 112 pounds. “They pinned me. I have a bruise on my head. I’ve been having head pain since that incident. My whole body is aching… I was crying. I was screaming.” She described the incident as a “kidnapping.”
Nasra also said that her phone was confiscated during the arrest and she has yet to get it back. She revealed that she was taken to a hospital during her detention because she had been suffering seizure-like symptoms. “The way they treated me during that episode while I was transported, I was cuffed from my hands to my legs. I was covered in chains,” she said. “They had a padlock on me… While I was in the hospital, if I needed to go to the restroom or I needed to get up, they had chains on me like Hannibal Lecter, pretty much.”
“It’s wrong. Everyone can see,” said her father, Mohamed Ahmed. “They’re not going after the ‘worst of the worst.’ They’re terrorizing the community. They’re terrorizing mostly communities of color, but everybody is being targeted now. Nasra committed no crime, but they put her in jail. She’s got bruises.”
Tensions have been high in the Twin Cities ever since the Trump administration sent ICE agents to the region. The situation worsened following the fatal shooting of Renee Good, who was shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Protests have erupted across the two cities in response to ICE’s violent tactics.