MINNEAPOLIS: When immigration agents began aggressive operations in Minneapolis last month, Kowsar Mohamed started knocking on doors, fielding late-night calls and mobilizing other Somali Americans into an ad-hoc response team.
Many feared they were being singled out, a worry that revived memories of the state surveillance and arbitrary authority they thought they had left behind when they resettled in the United States.
More than 100 volunteers now patrol south Minneapolis, distribute “Know Your Rights” guides and escort frightened elders — part of a sweeping grassroots effort to counter what many describe as constitutionally suspect raids that are destabilizing Minnesota’s roughly 80,000-strong Somali community, one of the country’s largest refugee populations.
“You would never fathom that people would just pluck you off the streets ... and say, ‘Prove to me that you’re a citizen,’” Mohamed said, referring to reports of aggressive tactics by the agents. “It’s not that we never thought it was impossible. We just believed the Constitution was going to protect us from this level of interrogation.”
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