Truth #2: Learning From Rapid Response Lessons for the Next Crisis

At the National Convergence for Democracy gathering held at the Minneapolis convention center in August, one session featured voices from the Somali community who represented experiences in law, health care, business, civic engagement, and rapid response during the federal occupation in Winter 2026. Here are a few of those voices, in part 1 of our new “This Is US” truth-telling series, supported by underwriting from the Minnesota Council of Foundations, in partnership with the Truth Council work of Advocates of Human Rights and the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis congregation.

Malika Dahir (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Malika Dahir, executive director of Reviving Sisterhood, noted that people were reporting ICE presence in their communities around Thanksgiving 2025. The first step was to separate misinformation from fact, since there were so many reports coming in via text apps about people being monitored or picked up. Fear and uncertainty was leading the conversation.

The second step was to figure out who was being directly impacted; who was in immediate danger; did they need mental, legal, or health supports?

The third step was to activate trusted people, such as Mohamed Ibrahim of the Somali American Bar Association, Dahir said, “who was on speed dial. He was on every Zoom that I that I did initially, because the first questions were always ‘What are my rights? What can I do?’ A lot of us hold legal status here, as citizens, permanent residents, those with refugee status.”

Informal community listening sessions ensured that people who were most affected were given agency to explain what they needed. A big role was coordinating all the moving parts, Dahir said, “to meet the urgent needs and turn fear and uncertainty into collective action and care, so that communities know they have resources and people are ready to get activated with the resources needed.”

She said there were a lot of calls about mental health. “People were stuck at home and it was a very different feel than when they were stuck at home during COVID, because this time they were getting hunted. We worked to get mental health supports online. One sister offered 30-minute therapy sessions to Black and Brown communities that reached out to us.”

There was also work done to dispel misinformation, calm people, reduce fear — and to verify information before it went out. “We always had community on the ground, boots on the ground, to give us correct information.”

Mohamed Ibrahim (photo by Sarah Whiting)

How did people access legal advice during the crisis? 

Ibrahim, a business attorney and president of the Somali American Bar Association, offered background about the common relationship families had with law enforcement in Somalia, as conveyed by his parents who grew up there. Parents could call on an officer to convey the importance of listening to their elders if a child was acting up, to deal with any issues at a young age — because officers were a trusted member of the community. In the U.S., that trust is missing, so the fear about law enforcement during Operation Metro Surge was palpable.

Ibrahim said he spent a lot of time sharing insights about the U.S. Constitution with community members during the federal occupation. U.S. forefathers foresaw how government or law enforcement could overstep its authority against the people, “so they granted us amendments to the Constitution that allow us to be free from seizure, to be free from being required to answer questions, being free from being arrested for no reason.”

Since federal agents were picking up anyone, regardless of citizenship — at one point roughly one-quarter of the people being processed at the Whipple Building were U.S. citizens — the common question people had was what to do if they show up at their home, or their child’s school, or stopped them in a car. “We had to meet people where they were to teach them about the rights they have, that they don’t have to answer questions, what a subpoena looks like. If they had a search warrant to come into your home, what did that actually look like?”

ICE officers were using administrative subpoenas, Ibrahim said, which did not come from a judge and did not give them legal authority to enter homes. So, teaching the difference of what the two different types of warrants looked like was a big part of education, as was the right to remain silent. If there were questions about immigration or legal status, they tried to match them up with an attorney for preliminary questions. 

“The most important thing for people to realize is that you have rights that stop the government from infringing upon you,” Ibrahim said. “They can’t legally just seize you. You have the right to ask for an attorney. You have the right to not open the door. You can ask to see the appropriate warrant, and a badge.”

He said one of the hardest scenarios was when children were taken from a school in Saint Paul. They were eventually located at an Apple Valley police station, where they had been taken for no apparent reason. “A lot of the tactics we were seeing was to generate the maximum amount of fear and we had to figure out ways to respond to that.” 

What needs to happen to prepare for a next time?

Many people volunteered to provide legal support, Ibrahim said, “which was incredible. A big thing that was happening at a rapid pace were habeas petitions. These are petitions that challenge the government’s ability to keep you detained, basically. A lot of folks were being trained to learn how to fill out these petitions. But there were missed opportunities as a community where we could have probably gotten an injunction against the Department of Homeland Security that were missed.”

Another missed opportunity was protecting the right to seek health care, go to school, go to worship, go to work. “These were being chilled by the government’s activity. We had the ability to basically bring a lawsuit against the government, saying that because of their operation, they were freezing people who should be unaffected by your operation. The reason we struggled with that is because we didn’t have the stories. We probably had a list of at least 180 individuals affected by ICE, with legal status, children to elderly — but we didn’t really have the ability to gather their stories so we could put them in a petition against the government.”

One woman went out to get feminine hygiene products and ended up being deported on a plane, on her hands and knees flying to Texas — and she was a U.S. citizen. Texas attorneys were found to fill out habeas petitions there, which enabled the woman to be released in about a day. But she was in Texas with no ID, no ability to buy a plane ticket or rent a car.

A network of attorneys in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California were engaged for creating petitions that made things easier, Ibrahim said. “But the hardest thing was how to collect these stories in a signed declaration or affidavit attached to a petition.”

When people can simply be sent by federal agents to another state, it also was understandable that people did not want to share stories that could potentially harm other family members. That is something that needs to be corrected, Ibrahim said.

Solidarity in Action

Nimco Ahmed (photo by Sarah Whiting)

Moderator Nimco Ahmed, co-founder of the Somali American Coalition, said the impact was felt in families, health care systems, businesses, schools, and civic life — and people were engaged in work well beyond their jobs.

“Everybody was babysitting, taking kids to school, feeding, cooking for families, delivering food. Imagine it being 3am, when I was bold enough to call the mayor or a state representative because of a crisis. Weekends, weekdays, nobody was getting much sleep. You were walking maybe all day in the cold. Then you would come home and still feel like you need to be out there.”

But people were picking up those calls, she added, sharing snippets of conversations people were having:

“’Do you have money? Someone needs groceries. I have two more people that I have to deliver to. Can you take three?’ Nobody was ever saying no. I would go to Alex Pretti’s memorial site at 3am and people were giving out tea and sambusas. I can’t even explain what we felt every day [with that solidarity among neighbors]. Looking back still makes me feel like Minneapolis and Minnesota is heaven.”

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