Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Ilhan Omar Whines About ICE Operations In Minneapolis

Screenshot/YouTube/Danielle Moodie

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar whined about United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minneapolis during a Friday podcast appearance, claiming they were terrorizing the community.

ICE is surging into the Minneapolis area to target illegal immigrants from Somalia after revelations into at least $1 billion in fraud, with the Treasury Department investigating whether some of the proceeds from the scheme went to the radical Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab, which is based in the East African nation. Omar told “Democracy-Ish” co-hosts Wajahat Ali and Danielle Moodie she was proud of the community’s response, saying it would eventually ensure “accountability” during the episode.

“What the community is doing is that they, they, are all collectively keeping each other informed on where ICE raids are happening,” Omar told Ali and Moodie. “And it is allowing for people to show up um, uh, to be able to document, to be able to push back, to be able, um, to urgently get whatever documentation the person who they are trying to uh, abduct is saying that they have.”

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“And, and, that I think at the moment we just need to make sure that we are protecting one another and that we are documenting every single action, because there will be accountability,” Omar continued. “There will, there will be accountability.”

During one enforcement operation carried out by ICE Monday, a crowd surrounded the agents, creating a situation that local WCCO reporter Jonah Kaplan described as “increasingly volatile.” ICE agents eventually had to use crowd-control munitions.

President Donald Trump announced in November he would end “Temporary Protected Status” for Somalis in response to the fraud allegations, saying that the influx of refugees had “destroyed our country.” Allegations of similar fraud schemes have since been raised by whistleblowers in Maine and Ohio.

Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis said during a Dec. 7 interview that city police would not cooperate with a federal immigration enforcement operation launched in the wake of the growing fraud scandal in Minnesota. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota admitted that the state “attracts criminals,” but demanded that Somali residents not be demonized during a Nov. 30 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”