Minnesota lawmaker Ilhan Omar registered her displeasure with the manner in which the Trump administration was clamping down on illegal immigration, likening their actions to those of countries like her native Somalia.
Per Fox News, Omar, 43, said she never envisioned that she was going to experience something of such nature in “god—-” United States.
“I don’t want to curse, but those of us who escaped places like that, the one place where we thought we would never experience this is the U.S. [sic] god—-” states,” she said at a Democratic field hearing in St. Paul, titled, “Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Deadly Assault on Minnesota.”
“And we should all be ashamed that it is the United States that is allowing for this to take place, and it is being… broadcast to the rest of the world, where people are calling and saying, ‘Are you sure this is America?’ I am ashamed, and we must do everything that we can to bring back the America we all escaped into.”
For several days, there have been confrontations between anti-ICE protesters and ICE agents in Minnesota. The confrontations turned deadly on January 7 after an ICE agent, identified as Jonathan Ross, shot and killed Renee Good, 37.
Good’s murder drew divided opinions among American politicians and citizens. While her death was labeled as murder by some politicians and commentators, Trump administration officials begged to differ, claiming that the ICE agent acted in self-defense, per The Hollywood Reporter. They also described Good as a “domestic terrorist.”
Omar, in her speech on Friday, also called out her Republican colleagues, claiming that they were OK with seeing the citizens they represent experience an “occupation that is terrorizing people in Minnesota that live in Minneapolis and St. Paul.”
“When my constituents call for help, we don’t ask them who they voted for, because that is what it means to be an elected U.S. representative,” she said. “So it is appalling for our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to be OK for the president to carry out retribution here in Minnesota,” she added.
“It is appalling for our Republican colleagues to be OK for there to be cell detentions in ICE for American citizens,” Omar continued. “It is appalling for them to be OK for there to be checkpoints in American cities where people are asked for their papers. And it is appalling for Americans to have to carry their citizen papers only to be told they are not sure those papers are correct.”
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