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Ilhan Omar Says ICE Agent Sat Outside Her Town Hall In Car With Mismatched Plates

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security after local police discovered an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent sitting outside of Omar's latest town hall in a car with mismatched license plates, a practice that was supposedly discontinued and that violates Minnesota state law.

In a letter Friday to Michael McCarthy, who oversees DHS's field office in St. Paul, Omar raised questions about how it was "appropriate or necessary" for an ICE agent to be parked outside of her town hall with constituents in Richfield on Thursday.

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Police providing security at the event became suspicious when they noticed a woman sitting in a Ford Explorer monitoring the building, so they ran her plates and saw they didn't match the car. When they approached the woman, she identified herself as security before eventually explaining that she was an employee of Homeland Security Investigations, an agency within ICE, and was taking part in an undercover drug operation in the area. After a call to her supervisor, she left.

The woman was parked in plain view of "a prominent sign indicating my town hall was taking place at this location," Omar wrote in her letter, adding that it "raises serious and uncomfortable questions about the purpose of HSI's presence outside of my event."

"At best, your agent was unable to assess that the parking lot of a community center hosting a Congressional event wasn't the best place to conduct a drug operation," she said. "At worst, it emphasizes many Americans' growing concern that the Trump administration uses ICE to surveil political opponents and may interfere with our democracy."

A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Here's a copy of Omar's letter, first obtained by HuffPost:

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This incident comes months after the Trump administration flooded Minnesota with federal immigration enforcement agents under the guise of rounding up and deporting criminal undocumented immigrants. In reality, thousands of these agents were crawling through the state grabbing Black and brown people off the streets, regardless of their citizenship status or criminal backgrounds.

Immigrant communities were terrorized, families were torn apart and driven into hiding, federal agents were circling schools looking for children to nab, and two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were fatally shot by federal agents.

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In her letter, Omar said she met with DHS officials in March and raised "dozens of reports we had received from community members" about ICE agents who had been switching out license plates on their vehicles, which is against the law in Minnesota.

"I was assured at that meeting that the practice had ended and [Homeland Security Investigations] was coordinating with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety to receive new undercover license plates for all vehicles," she added. "It appears that this commitment was untrue."

The lawmaker gave McCarthy until Aug. 14 to answer questions about why an ICE agent was sent to the Richfield community center on the same night as her town hall, when the agent became aware that a congressional event was happening at the location and why DHS did not coordinate with local law enforcement.