Who Is Aliya Rahman? Severely Injured ICE Victim Thrown Out Of Trump's State Of The Union Speech

Aliya Rahman, a Minneapolis woman who says she was badly hurt by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during a January traffic stop, was removed from President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in Washington on Tuesday night after she stood up in the public gallery.​

It was a small gesture in a tightly choreographed evening, and it landed like a warning flare. Rahman's removal folded two volatile stories into one moment, Trump's unsubstantiated claims about fraud in Minnesota and a growing row over how federal immigration agents use force, particularly against people with disabilities.​

Aliya Rahman And A State Of The Union Flashpoint

Raw Story reported that Rahman had been invited to attend the speech by Rep Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who represents Minnesota, and that she was escorted out as Trump began talking about alleged fraud in the state. Trump claimed that the Somali American community in Minnesota had taken about $19 billion from taxpayers through fraud schemes, while offering no evidence for that figure.​

Rahman later reduced the theatre of the night to something almost absurd. She said, 'There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up. I was arrested for standing up.'

Aliya Rahman And The ICE Incident She Describes

To recall, Rahman was forcibly removed from her car during a traffic stop by ICE agents in January, and that she told a House panel earlier this month that agents threatened to kill her and dragged her from the vehicle, causing serious injuries.​

In her own account, Rahman introduced herself as a Minneapolis resident, a Bangladeshi American, and a disabled person living with autism and a traumatic brain injury. She stated that on 13 January, on the way to what she calls her 39th appointment at Hennepin County's Traumatic Brain Injury Center, she hit a traffic jam she says was caused by ICE vehicles, with no signs showing how to get around it.

Rahman added she did not want to pull into a blocked intersection but verbally agreed after an agent shouted, 'MOVE. I WILL BREAK YOUR F***ING WINDOW.' The agents around the vehicle allegedly yelled conflicting threats and instructions that she could not process while watching for pedestrians, then glass from the passenger side window flew across her face.

Then, Rahman said she yelled, 'I'm disabled!' and that an agent replied, 'TOO LATE.' In that moment, she thought of other names and deaths that have become shorthand for state violence in America, including Jenoah Donald, whom she described as an autistic Black man killed by police during a traffic stop in 2021, and Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, whom she said was killed by ICE in his vehicle last year.

Her account then turns physical, and grim. Rahman claimed an agent pulled a large combat knife in front of her face, that she hit the ground, and that she felt pain in her head, neck and wrists while people leaned on her back. She referenced George Floyd, killed four blocks away, as she describes being carried face down through the street by her cuffed arms and legs.

Rahman then claimed she cannot now lift her arms normally, before adding that she was never asked for ID, never told she was under arrest, never read her rights, and never charged with a crime. She also described what she said she saw and heard after she was taken to a facility, including Black and brown people shackled together and agents referring to detainees as 'bodies.'

Rahman revealed she received no medical screening, no phone call, and no access to a lawyer, and that she was denied a communication navigator when her speech began to slur. She also asked for her cane and was refused, that she was placed in leg irons, and that agents mocked her as they pushed her to walk.

She added she blacked out on a cell floor and later woke up in Hennepin County's emergency room, where she learned she had been taken there to be treated for assault. Her final point is not personal consolation, but something closer to a vow, that she feels a duty to people still detained, and that she is not afraid to keep working on the lack of rules and accountability she believes enables violence.

ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, or police have yet to release an official statement about Aliyah Rahman's removal from Donald Trump's State of the Union address.