Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, attacked in Minneapolis, defies Trump: ‘Fear and intimidation doesn’t work on me’

Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has no intention of being intimidated by Donald Trump. After years of verbal attacks from the U.S. president, Omar, a Somali-American, was sprayed with an unidentified liquid by a man on Tuesday while speaking publicly in Minneapolis. The following day, far from hiding, she appeared again at the Karmel Mall, a four-story shopping center and the heart of the Somali community in the state’s most populous city. There, the congresswoman warned Trump: “I think my presence here should tell you that fear and intimidation doesn’t work on me.”

Omar spoke alongside Representative Ayanah Presley (Massachusetts), a fellow member of the Democratic Party’s left wing, and other local and state politicians, before a mix of journalists, mall business owners, and Somali activists. “The president’s rhetoric, the attacks from him since I’ve gotten into public office has always been to stop me from being in public service,” she said. “To intimidate me, to make me want to quit and my only message is it hasn’t worked thus far and it’s not going to work in the future.”

The politician has represented Minnesota’s fifth district since 2019. On Wednesday, she spoke about Alex Pretti and Renee Good — two Americans killed by Trump’s immigration police, who have occupied Minneapolis for almost two months — called for the “abolition of ICE” (“no federal agent can act as judge, jury, and executioner in our streets,” she said) and recalled that during his first presidency, Trump’s attacks made her the congresswoman who received the highest number of death threats.

“I became a freshman who nobody should have actually known I existed because I wielded no power to having the most death threats of any member of Congress,” said Omar. “To the point where I had to have six Capitol Police officers providing a 24-hour detail to me and my family. And then [Joe] Biden got elected, and for four years it almost plummeted. Then he came back into office, and he resumed his vitriol. And now my death threats are the highest of the members of Congress,” she added. After Tuesday’s attack Omar asked the Speaker of the House, Republican Mike Johnson, for increased security, which Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, granted.

Since his return to the White House, Trump’s insults have been almost constant. The Republican has called Omar — who arrived in the country as a refugee when she was a child — “garbage,” told her to go back to her country, repeatedly lied about her marrying her brother, and ridiculed her hijab by calling it her “little turban.”

Shortly before she was sprayed with a syringe by a 55-year-old man, described to EL PAÍS on Wednesday as a “drunk,” the U.S. president said at a rally in Iowa that immigrants “have to show they can love our country; they have to be proud — not like Ilhan Omar.” The audience, accustomed to their leader’s vitriol, greeted the reference to the Minnesota congresswoman with loud boos.

A “setup”

The following day, Trump said in an ABC News interview, again without any evidence, that he was convinced the attack was a setup staged by the congresswoman. “I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud,” Trump said. “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.” During her appearance at the Karmel shopping mall, Omar emphasized the inconsistency of the U.S. president making that statement, given that the previous evening he had been talking about her “for 20 or 30 minutes” in Iowa. “Then when asked about my attack, he said, ‘I don’t think about her.’ Does he not remember? Is he suffering from dementia?” the congresswoman said.

Omar reacted to the attack, which occurred just as she was calling for the resignation of Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security and the public face of the White House’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda. She lunged at the attacker, who was subdued by members of her security team. Afterward, she insisted on continuing her speech, despite being advised against it.

The assailant has been charged with assault, and the FBI has taken over the investigation. According to Omar, speaking on Wednesday, the man attacked her because Trump had led him to believe she was “the one protecting Somalis.” “We are protected by the Constitution,” the congresswoman said.

The U.S. president has spent months blaming the entire Somali community in Minnesota, one of the largest in the country, over a fraud related to receiving government aid dating back to the pandemic. There have been trials connected to the case, as well as court convictions of U.S. citizens, not just Somalis. Trump has used this scandal to justify the deployment of 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota, where they have been engaged for two months in the largest anti-immigration operation since the Republican returned to power.

It’s a flawed excuse: the vast majority (more than 90%) of Somalis in Minnesota — who began arriving as refugees in the Midwestern state in the 1990s fleeing the civil war in their country — are U.S. citizens or legal residents, so the authorities cannot deport them, no matter how much Trump insists on the urgency of doing so.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition