Ilhan Omar hit with unknown spray and other highlights from chaotic Minneapolis town hall
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., held a town hall Tuesday evening in her home district amid recent shootings involving federal immigration agents and local agitators in Minneapolis.
The event started out mostly uneventful until someone attacked the congresswoman with some sort of chemical spray that had a foul odor, according to those close by. Those nearby Omar wanted her to leave, but Omar refused and continued on.
"Please don't let them have the show," Omar could be heard saying after she was hit with the foul-smelling spray. "We will continue! These f----ing a--holes are not going to get away with this."
"Here is the reality that people like this ugly man don't understand," Omar said as she returned to the microphone. "We are Minnesota strong and we will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us."
Omar and her fellow far-left Democrats spent a lot of time slamming federal immigration efforts and the Trump administration. Omar called for the impeachment or resignation of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem directly before she was attacked with the foul-smelling spray towards the beginning of her address.
"Everybody, everybody settle down. I'm going to finish my remarks," Omar said following the attack. "It is important for me to continue to lead my Democratic colleagues in demanding [Noem's] resignation."
At other points, Omar referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a "rogue agency" which "escalates violence."
"ICE is shooting people in broad daylight, beating up teenagers, spraying tear gas on peaceful, peaceful protesters, ripping people out of their cars and homes without warrants, racially profiling people based on their accent, taking kids from schools and abducting people, shipping them far away detention camps with brutal conditions and no due process," Omar told the crowd of people at her town hall event. "We cannot treat this as business as usual."
She then accused ICE agents of having committed murder.
"Murder … it's not something that has a statute of limitation. And so, regardless of what these people think, we're going to make sure that they are held accountable in every way that we can," she said, while noting, "Obviously, there are investigations, even if the federal government has chosen not to fully comply, in having a transparent investigation."
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However, despite Omar's tense rhetoric towards federal immigration officials, she did list at least one thing ICE has done well – albeit somewhat sarcastically.
"One thing that ICE has succeeded in doing is making Minneapolis residents love Minneapolis police," Omar quipped after a woman in the crowd asked what Minneapolis residents can do to help their police department. "That's the only thing they've succeeded at doing."
Omar also called on her Republican colleagues in Congress Tuesday night to "grow a backbone" and pass Congress's war powers resolution. She discussed what she knew about ICE officials potentially leaving Minneapolis, noting she saw reporting that 800 had already left. And the congresswoman also discussed how local police are supposed to adhere to federal immigration detainers, describing the process as akin to "basically turn[ing] them over in the parking lot."
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Meanwhile, Omar also likened federal immigration operations to the atrocities many asylum seekers are trying to get away from.
"People talk a lot about illegal immigration and criminals, but what this enforcement has truly done is frighten actual citizens and documented neighbors. The children that are afraid to go to schools, the mothers and fathers that are afraid to drop them off, the elderly shop owners, they're all citizens, but they don't want the trauma of seeing men with heavy machine guns, because that is what they escaped to come to the United States," Omar said before concluding her Tuesday evening town hall. "They don't want to go through a checkpoint, because that is what they escaped to come to the United States. They don't want a gun drawn on them asking for their identification, because that's what they escaped to come to the United States."