A disabled Minneapolis resident violently arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in January is suing the federal government over the arrest and her subsequent detention. Aliya Rahman filed the lawsuit Tuesday, accusing officers of unlawful arrest, excessive force and inadequate medical care despite her repeated pleas.

Rahman has said she has autism and a traumatic brain injury. She says she continues to experience severe stress and anxiety from the encounter, which became another flashpoint in outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

Her arrest occurred Jan. 13 during the administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” in the Minneapolis area. Rahman was driving to a doctor appointment when she encountered the ICE officers.

Video recorded by a bystander shows officers surrounding Rahman’s car before dragging her from the vehicle. They restrained her with her arms behind her back and carried her by the arms in that position.

According to the complaint, officers banged on Rahman’s car windows and yelled at her while she attempted to move out of the intersection as ordered. After Rahman said “they needed to learn how to respect human beings,” an officer broke her car window.

“Though an officer had just smashed her window without any legal basis, covering her with broken glass, other officers immediately yelled at Ms. Rahman to ‘go,’ ‘get out,’ and ‘get out of here,’ gesturing eastward on East 34th Street,” the complaint states.

“Terrified and in shock, Ms. Rahman attempted to comply and drove forward, eastbound on East 34th Street. But at this point, officers stopped her, reaching through her windows at Ms. Rahman and pulling open her car doors.”

Rahman was detained at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling. Her complaint alleges that she was denied medical care there even as her condition deteriorated.

Rahman’s attorneys submitted an administrative complaint against the Department of Homeland Security in April under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which was the first step toward suing the government. The law allows people to sue the United States over a federal employee’s actions.

Her legal team also filed a separate complaint with the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in June. Jessica Gingold, Rahman’s attorney and senior counsel at the MacArthur Justice Center, told MS NOW that both complaints went unanswered and that, to her knowledge, DHS had taken no action against the unidentified officers.

“Perhaps they can ignore our administrative complaint, but once we go to court, they have to answer,” Gingold said. “And we have all the tools at our disposal to get discovery, to depose the agents that were involved in this incident and to demand that there is some accountability for what happened.”

DHS disputed Rahman’s account at the time and called her an agitator who “ignored multiple commands by an officer to move her vehicle away from the scene.” A department spokesperson responded to the new case by saying, “We are aware of the lawsuit and look forward to vigorously defending ourselves in court.”

Gingold said Rahman had been heading to the traumatic brain injury center when the arrest occurred. She said the incident redirected Rahman’s healing and left her spending the following months largely focused on physical therapy for her shoulders.

“She had been going to the traumatic brain injury center on the day that this happened, and this kind of rerouted her whole healing journey,” Gingold said. “And she had to spend the last several months mostly focused on physical therapy for her shoulders after being carried like an animal through the street for 215 feet.”

Rahman’s arrest happened days after an ICE officer shot and killed Minneapolis resident Renee Good. Less than two weeks after Rahman’s encounter, ICE officers shot and killed another Minneapolis resident, intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti.

Speaking at a Tuesday morning news conference, Rahman said the issue extended beyond ICE’s aggressive enforcement tactics and that she wanted to highlight the state’s historical wrongs against minorities. “What happened to me is not just about ICE, and lawsuits are only one tool for fixing what is really going on.”

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