Minneapolis woman who Ilhan Omar took to State of the Union needed medical care after arrest
WASHINGTON — Aliyah Rahman, a Minnesota woman whom Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., brought as a guest to the State of the Union address Tuesday, had to be hospitalized after being arrested during the speech, Rahman and Omar said.
Rahman stood silently during the portion of President Donald Trump’s speech in which he called on Democrats to restore funding to the Department of Homeland Security. The people around her remained seated. When U.S. Capitol Police approached and asked Rahman to sit down, she refused.
During her conversation with Capitol Police officers, the crowd around her gave a standing ovation, which Rahman tried to explain to officers as a reason she should not be forced to leave.
Capitol Police took Rahman, who was walking with the aid of a crutch, and began dragging her toward the exit — a move that drew protests from one of the gallery’s other guests, who called for police to be less aggressive with Rahman.
Rahman said in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that she was in the custody of Capitol Police and then in the hospital until shortly before 4 a.m.
“I wasn’t just kicked out and arrested. I was arrested so physically that two other attendees on the floor tried to intervene as the officers were pulling my shoulders after I told them I had a torn rotator cuff tendon and multiple cartilage tears on both of my shoulders,” she said.
Rahman told Goodman that the House Sergeant at Arms told her she was arrested because “I was standing. Quietly. No buttons, no facial expressions, no gestures, no signs. Not a sound. Standing.”
“There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union: sit down and stand up. All kinds of people were up all night. Me too,” Rahman said.
She said in the interview that she suffered a torn rotator cuff and torn cartilage after federal agents in Minneapolis dragged her from her car last month as she drove down a street where an anti-immigration protest was taking place. Rahman said she was trying to get to a doctor’s appointment.
Capitol Police said Rahman was arrested for unlawful conduct and disrupting Congress.
“All State of the Union posts clearly explain that protesting is prohibited,” Capitol Police said in a statement. “The guest was asked to sit down, but refused to obey our lawful orders. It is illegal to disrupt Congress and demonstrate in Congressional buildings.”
Omar slammed Rahman’s arrest on Wednesday, calling for a “full explanation of why this arrest took place.”
“The brutal response to a peaceful guest sends a chilling message about the state of our democracy,” she said in a statement.
Omar said Rahman was taken to George Washington University Hospital for treatment and then booked into Capitol Police headquarters. According to a description provided by Omar’s office, Rahman is a disabled person with autism and traumatic brain injury from Minneapolis.
Minneapolis has been at the center of the Trump administration’s intense immigration crackdown in recent months in what is known as Operation Metro Surge.
During the operation, federal agents shot several people, killing Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed. Congressional Democrats have demanded that the Department of Homeland Security change its immigration enforcement tactics, refusing to vote for a bill that would fund the department and leading the government into a partial shutdown.
