The Aliya Rahman situation in Minneapolis is a total wreck that just keeps getting uglier. You have a disabled U.S. citizen who is autistic and just trying to get to a routine brain injury appointment, and she ends up getting ripped out of her car by masked federal agents in broad daylight.
The video shows the whole brutal process. They smashed her passenger window and slashed her seatbelt before dragging her face-down by her limbs onto the asphalt toward an ICE van. All the while, she is screaming that she’s disabled and just trying to get to the doctor.
This wasn’t some routine stop. Agents swarmed her at an intersection and blasted contradictory commands through a wall of sirens and horns, creating a total no-win situation. If she moved, she risked hitting the feds, which is exactly how Renee Good was killed by ICE agent Jonathan Ross just a week earlier. If she stayed put, she got manhandled.
It is a textbook compliance trap. Minneapolis was already at a boiling point because of Operation Metro Surge, and local officia straight up calling it a federal invasion.
Even the Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara couldn’t hide how much this pissed him off. He called out the conflicting orders and the total disregard for her disability, saying if those agents answered to him, they would have serious problems.
After they dragged her out, Rahman ended up at Whipple Detention Center where she begged for her cane and a doctor, only to be denied and bound like an animal until she passed out in her cell. She was eventually treated for injuries consistent with assault and released with zero charges filed.
Now, Alexa Van Brunt and the MacArthur Justice Center are stepping in to push for a civil rights lawsuit, so this fight is far from over.
