DOJ arrests 16 agitators in Minnesota for assaulting federal law enforcement

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Wednesday that 16 people have been arrested in Minnesota for allegedly assaulting law enforcement in the state. This comes as the Trump administration has been carrying out immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, with agents being targeted by anti-ICE agitators. 

Bondi wrote, "I am on the ground in Minneapolis today. Federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement — people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents. We expect more arrests to come. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: NOTHING will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law."

The 16 who have been arrested so far for assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees are Kirubele Adbebe, Nasra Ahmed, Helicity Borowska, Matrim Charlebois, Joshua Doyle, Gillian Etherington, Nitzana Flores, Paul Johnson, Abdikadir Noor, Christina Rank, Margaret Sager, Madeline Tschida, Alice Valentine, William Vermie, Quentin Williams, and Ilan Wilson-Soler.

Nasra Ahmed, 23, previously claimed that she had been "kidnapped and arrested" by ICE agents in Minnesota. She went viral for saying during a speech about the alleged incident, "I’m proud to be Somali. To me, being Somali isn’t just eating bananas with rice. It’s a lot. It’s an interesting thing. It’s very hard to describe what it means to be Somali and what it means to be American but it’s like a cultural fusion. It’s kind of like the bananas and rice, you know?"

This comes as an appeals court has halted restrictions that would have limited how ICE could respond to agitators during immigration enforcement operations in the state. 

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit stayed a preliminary injunction issued earlier this year by a federal district court in Minnesota, which hampered the agency’s ability to arrest, detain, pepper-spray, or otherwise act against agitators unless they had probable cause. 

The FBI has also launched an investigation into an anti-ICE network of Signal chats in Minnesota, through which agitators take up rolls that include trailing suspected ICE agents throughout Minneapolis and other cities. Agitators are instructed to follow and confront agents and spead word of their locations.