US citizen sues after federal agents in Minnesota threw him in unmarked car and refused to let him go despite seeing passport
A scathing ACLU lawsuit accuses federal immigration officials of waging a “large-scale” racial profiling campaign comparing the tactics of Homeland Security agents to the actions of a police state as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on Minnesota.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in federal court on Thursday, accuses agencies like DHS, ICE and Border Patrol of “violently stopping and arresting countless Minnesotans based on their race and perceived ethnicity, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status,” and highlights “Somali and Latinx people who have been the targets of stops and arrests due to racial profiling motivated by bias.”
The case highlights the experiences of a group of U.S. citizens who alleged gross mistreatment by federal agents.
Mubashir Khalif Hussen, 20, was out for lunch. December 10, when a pair of federal agents grabbed him in an unmarked car and pushed him into a restaurant, where the agents allegedly pulled him back into the snow with a headlock, according to the lawsuit.
“Mr. Hussen repeatedly informed the officers that he was a U.S. citizen and repeatedly asked the agents to let him take his jacket along with his phone so he could show them the picture of his passport card,” the lawsuit states. “The agents did not allow him to return to the building to retrieve his driver’s license or phone and placed him in the back of the unmarked car.”
An ACLU lawsuit accuses federal agents of mass racial profiling and unprovoked targeting of US citizens as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing Minnesota crackdown (REUTERS)
The complaint alleges that Hussen’s supervisor showed agents a copy of his passport card, but the agents ignored it.
Agents allegedly repeatedly demanded a scan of Hussen’s face throughout the encounter and then took him to a second location, then drove him to an ICE field office at Fort Snelling; where he was released without charge or subjected to immigration proceedings.
Agents ended the encounter by releasing Hussen “in the December cold and telling him to walk the seven miles from the field office to where they detained him,” the complaint alleges. He was later caught by his family.
The lawsuit adds: “Mr. Hussen fears arrest and re-detention because of his Somali identity.”
In an unrelated encounter, agents pepper-sprayed Hussen in the face after he recorded federal officers with his phone on a public sidewalk, according to the lawsuit.
Independent He contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
Mubashir Khalif Hussen, 20, claims he was arrested by agents who refused repeated attempts to show he was a U.S. citizen (Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey)
The Trump administration’s crackdown on Minnesota, which began in December shortly after the president dismissed the state’s large Somali population as garbage, was controversial from the start.
Things escalated further with the fatal shooting of an ICE agent earlier this month. Renee Goodand it accelerated again this week when a federal agent shot a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg during a traffic stop.
The operation was met with widespread peaceful protests as well as scattered incidents of violence.
The president has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would deploy active-duty military or federal National Guard troops to quell the unrest. The Trump administration said the Minnesota operation, which was planned to involve more than 2,000 agents, was the largest immigration operation in U.S. history.
Tensions have been high in Minneapolis since an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good earlier this month (Kerem Yücel/AFP via Getty Images)
The president’s military-style immigration operations across the country are dogged by allegations that agents use racial profiling, random screening and authoritarian tactics to stop him.
Management insists on mostly screenings resulted in the arrest of individuals without criminal convictionsis being targeted.
The White House argues that military-style deployments are needed in sanctuary zones that do not force local police and prisons to assist with federal immigration enforcement.
