Aliya Rahman, Minneapolis, Minnesota woman dragged from car by ICE agents. Woman revealed to be software engineer with deep history of left wing progressive activism. Viral incident caught on video leads to debate of government over reach and unaccountability as incident comes less than a week after fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.
A tech guru and LGBT and racial justice activist who describes herself as a ‘friendly neighborhood deniable asset,’ has been thrown in the spotlight after viral footage captured the moment the activist was dragged from her car by ICE agents during protests in Minnesota in South Minneapolis on Tuesday.
Aliya Rahman, 43, of Minneapolis was allegedly blocking ICE agents working to arrest illegal immigrants on Tuesday when officers pulled from her the vehicle as she desperately clung onto the driver’s side door.
Minnesota woman implores she’s autistic
Video (see below) shows multiple masked agents wearing sunglasses and flak jackets arguing with the woman as she tries to drive away from the chaotic encounter. Two of the men reach in through the driver side window before one of them forcing it open and dragging the woman to the ice ground.
‘I’ve been beat up by police before,’ Rahman shouts as she is dragged off along the road by masked federal agents. ‘I’m disabled, I’m trying to go to the doctor up there, that’s why I couldn’t move. I am an autistic disabled person, I’m trying to go to the doctor.’
As the agents drag her away, bystanders yell at them to stop, with one screaming, ‘where is your humanity?’.
‘That’s so f***ed up,’ cries a protester while another is heard saying ‘All you do is hurt’.
Over-reach or justified?
Opined commentators on social media, ‘These goons are doing whatever they want to whoever they want with zero justification.’
Stated another, ‘I don’t understand, If they nothing to hide why she doesn’t follow the orders?’
Wrote another, ‘They were doing an ICE raid and had the road blocked off. They told her to go a different way and she kept trying to go through anyway.’
Tear gas, flash bang grenades and pepper balls were also fired towards the protesters during the stand-off, which occurred at the corner of 34th Street and Park.
Some reporting has suggested the woman in question was attempting to wedge the agents between her vehicle and another one blocking the street but that is not clear in the clip shared on social media.
Who is Aliya Rahman Minneapolis woman?
Rahman, equipped with a masters in science from Purdue University, according to her LinkedIn is a ‘community-focused security practitioner,’ and software engineer with a lengthy background in coding, had previously backed policies for police-worn body cameras along with having ties to multiple different advocacy groups, including a decade-long history with the Black Lives Matter movement.
In her X profile, Rahman describes herself as ‘your friendly neighborhood deniable asset.’
She was previously a fellow at the New America’s Open Technology Institute where her first project zeroed in on police body cameras and how they could be built into policy.
‘Her work is informed by a background in legislative, electoral, and community organizing for racial and criminal justice campaigns, 15 years of software development for the social justice movement, and a former life as an educator and researcher working in public education and workforce development,’ her bio on the institute’s website reads.
Activism causes that Minnesota woman has aligned with
Rahman a U.S born citizen with Bangladesh roots and where she spent her childhood and was exposed to a ‘revolutionary energy during her childhood,’ has aligned herself with various advocacy and nonprofit groups, including Center for Community Change, Equality Ohio — an LGBT advocacy group — and Code for Progress.
She’s also supported the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-Palestine causes, according to her social media.
Rahman served as the director of movement technology at Wellstone, a Minnesota-based nonprofit ‘that trains the community activists and political leaders that broadly make up the progressive Left,’ according to the profile.
She boasted that she changed the advocacy group’s image from that of a ‘nice, white people-run organization’ to ‘mostly queer, largely immigrant and overwhelmingly femme-identified or gender nonconforming.’
Tuesday’s episode comes just six days after Minneapolis mom of 3, Renee Nicole Good, 37, was fatally shot by an ICE agent after failing to get out of her car after being approached by masked ICE agents and then shot as she sought to drive away.
ICE accused of over reach amid debates to disband group targeting illegal immigrants on the ground across the U.S
The woman’s shooting has led to the Trump administration saying that the woman was shot after she attempted to run over an ICE agent and use her vehicle as a ‘weapon’ akin to a ‘domestic terrorist’. It is unlikely any charges with be brought against the ICE agent, Johnathan Ross.
The episode has led to accusations of government over reach and demands that ICE be disbanded, with demonstrations being held in cities across the U.S., with further protests held in Minneapolis, New York City and Washington, D.C., Tuesday.
ICE official Charles Marcus told Fox News that at least 60 protesters have been arrested and charged with impeding or assaulting immigration authorities in Minnesota in the last five days.
“We will be arresting anybody that interferes or impedes in any of these enforcement actions,” he told the outlet. ‘We’ve already arrested 60… that have got in our way, impeded us or assaulted an officer.’
The Trump administration has dispatched more than 2,000 agents to the Minneapolis-St Paul area so far in what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest operation ever, part of President Donald Trump’s controversial crackdown on undocumented migrants.
