WASHINGTON — Aliyah Rahman, a Minnesota woman whom Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., took as her guest to the State of the Union address Tuesday, needed hospital treatment after she was arrested during the speech, Rahman and Omar said.
Rahman silently stood up during the part of President Donald Trump’s speech in which he called on Democrats to restore funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The people around her remained seated. When U.S. Capitol Police approached and asked Rahman to sit down, she refused.
During her conversation with Capitol Police officers, the crowd around her gave a standing ovation, which Rahman tried to explain to the officers was a reason she should not be forced to leave.
Capitol Police took Rahman, who was walking with the help of a crutch, and started pulling her toward the exit — a move that faced protest from one of the other guests in the gallery, who called on the police to be less aggressive with Rahman.
Rahman said in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that she was in the custody of Capitol Police and then in the hospital until just before 4 a.m.
“I was not just removed and arrested. I was arrested so physically that two other attendees upstairs attempted to intervene in officers pulling on my shoulders after I told them I have a torn rotator cuff tendon and multiple cartilage tears in both of my shoulders,” she said.
Rahman told Goodman that the House sergeant-at-arms told her she was arrested because “I was standing up. Silently. No buttons, no facial expressions, no gestures, no signs. Not one sound. Standing up.”
“There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up. All kinds of people were standing up all night. Me, too,” Rahman said.
She said in the interview that she has a torn rotator cuff and cartilage tears after federal agents in Minneapolis dragged her out of her car last month when she drove down a street where an anti-immigration protest was happening. Rahman said she had been trying to get to a doctor’s appointment.
Capitol Police said Rahman was arrested on a charge of unlawful conduct, disruption of Congress.
“All State of the Union tickets clearly explain that demonstrating is prohibited,” Capitol Police said in a statement. “The guest was told to sit down, but refused to obey our lawful orders. It is illegal to disrupt the Congress and demonstrate in the Congressional Buildings.”
Omar blasted Rahman’s arrest Wednesday, calling for a “full explanation of why this arrest occurred.”
“The heavy-handed response to a peaceful guest sends a chilling message about the state of our democracy,” she said in a statement.
Omar said Rahman was taken to George Washington University Hospital for treatment and later booked at Capitol Police headquarters. According to a description provided by Omar’s office, Rahman is a disabled person with autism and a traumatic brain injury from Minneapolis.
Minneapolis was at the center of the Trump administration’s intense immigration crackdown in recent months as part of so-called Operation Metro Surge.
During the operation, federal agents shot several people, killing Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed. Democrats in Congress have demanded that the Department of Homeland Security change its immigration enforcement tactics, refusing to vote for a bill that would fund the department and driving the government into a partial shutdown.