THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2026
It's all over now but the sifting: The young woman who was dragged from her car in Minneapolis has been identified, though she may not be quite as young as we would have thought.
We'll start by offering a limited account we assume to be completely reliable, from Minnesota Public Radio:
Photojournalist's notebook: Watching a woman dragged away pleading, 'I'm just trying to get to the doctor'
“I was just trying to get to the doctor!” shouted Aliya Rahman, who is a U.S.-born citizen, as four masked federal agents carried her, face-down, along Park Avenue toward a federal vehicle waiting nearby. It was shortly after 10 a.m., and moments earlier as I arrived at the scene, ICE and HSI agents dragged Rahman from her Ford Fusion after she appeared to drive around a cluster of ICE agents and observers that were in the street
The agents, one of whom had lost a sneaker, finally got her to an open vehicle and hoisted Rahman in, her face still contorted with cries for help. Meanwhile further up the street, a man, whose face was bloodied, was also loaded into an unmarked car and driven away.
As of 6 p.m. on Tuesday, a friend of Rahman’s confirmed to me that she had been released.
While the two people were being detained, dozens of observers and protesters screamed at the agents and the now-familiar shriek of whistles reverberated around the intersection....
At that point, the report by photojournalist Ben Hovland moves to a different incident. Some sobering photos of Rahman's removal to that federal vehicle accompany his report.
We continue to mention this particular incident because the video of Rahman's apparent arrest was widely show on cable news channels on Tuesday evening. This incident also occasioned the dispute on Tuesday's edition of The Five which we cited in yesterday morning's report.
On that program, Jessica Tarlov accepted Rahman's statements at face value. She said that Rahman actually had been trying to get to a medical appointment when she was roughly seized by a group of ICE agents.
Inevitably, Jesse Watters described Rahman's claim as the latest "hoax." (On this ludicrous imitation of a "cable news" show, almost everything is.) He and Greg Gutfeld staged their daily mugging of Tarlov, with Watters asserting that we'd soon learn that the still-unidentified woman had actually been "obstructing an ICE operation," apparently in an intentional manner.
On last evening's edition of The Five, Gutfeld pushed this theme a bit further. As videotape of the incident played, Gutfeld seemed to suggest that Rahman was a "professional freelance agitator," part of a shadowy group who hope to get another person hurt by ICE, due to the propaganda value such an event provides.
(He also suggested that the late Renee Good had been involved in that alleged project. To watch his latest angry and novelized rant, you can just click here.)
The agitprop continued from Gutfeld, who seems to get more frantic, more angry and more irresponsible with each passing day. Meanwhile, a fuller profile of Rahman has appeared in the New York Post, describing her as a 43-year-old graduate of Purdue.
That lengthy profile by Emily Crane doesn't attempt to explain what Rahman actually did on Tuesday morning before she was assailed by that group of ICE agents. We can't vouch for the perfect accuracy of every part of Crane's report, but based on Crane's sourcing, we know of no obvious reason to assume the reporting is inaccurate.
We'll only offer this:
Who was it, the lady or the tiger? Tarlov accepted Rahman's statements at face value. In two days of mugging Tarlov, Watters and Gutfeld have proceeded to invent an alternate demonic novelized tale.
As that video footage ran Tuesday night, many people felt for Rahman as her car window was smashed, as her seatbelt was cut away from her body, and as she was very roughly hauled away. Will our news orgs ever report who she is and what actually happened that day?
We'll look for that with some curiosity. Crane's report identifies Rahman as a long-standing "racial justice activist," but it doesn't say that Rahman did something wrong on Tuesday morning.
We'll be curious to see what the Fox News Channel's pair of flyweight bully boys have to say tonight. It's all over now but the incessant shouting, along with the incessant sifting and creation of facts.
What did Rahman do that day? Crane makes no attempt to say. We still have no idea.
ReplyDelete"Inevitably, Jesse Watters described Rahman's claim as the latest "hoax.""
Heh. Apparently Jesse Watters has been dealing with you BlueAnons and your shitty fake news media for a while. Of course it's a hoax, no doubt about that.
"What did Rahman do that day?"
Puhleeze, Bob. I know and you know what she did: she was interfering with federal agents doing their job, serving and protecting The American People. Are you insane, to deny it? Who are you bullshitting?
There is a reason the saying “Phonier than a Republican voter who isn’t a sexual predator “ is a meme.
Deleteanon 3:52, when you give a response to 3:47 like this one, it makes anon 3:47 look smart by comparison. What is it with you? you seem to go to the outer limits of absolute stupidness and beyond. Your constant comments are absurd.
DeleteAC/MA No one here cares what your opinions of other commenters are.
DeleteI think 3:52 is providing a service by reminding readers that the right still hasn't dealt with the Epstein files, because Republicans don't really care what happens to sexually abused teens at the hands of rich and powerful righ wingers.
4:25 - Actually, I care about AC/MA's opinions of other commenters. But I find it's hard to care about the opinions of rando anons.
DeleteICEwatch has organized people to interfere with ICE's law enforcement activities. This interference is illegal. Whether or not Rahman was one of the interferers, her treatment was provoked by the intentional, illegal interference. ICEwatch is morally responsible for Rahman's treatment.
ReplyDeleteMeh.
DeleteRaping children is also illegal, and you can’t get anywhere near a Republican Congressional seat without doing it..
I love ICEWatch, because they upset norms.
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteMao is too busy beating off to photos of Hunter Biden’s penis on the internet, so he asked me to tell you to squeal louder.
fuck you trollDIC. Get the fuck out of here you fucking pest.
Delete"ICEwatch has organized people to interfere with ICE's law enforcement activities. This interference is illegal."
DeleteAs I replied to you earlier, ICE has adopted a flexible definition of "interfering." Your two assertions that I quoter here are opinions, not facts. Courts have held repeatedly that some activities that ICE calls "interference" are not illegal.
The right has already "criminalized" legal activities by protesters, acts that are part of our freedoms and rights as UC citizens. These include freedom of expression, freedom to gather and congregate, safety from unreasonable search and seizure (including in vehicles) and freedom from being detained without due process. ICE meanwhile is offering non-legal warrants (not signed by any judge) as authorization to detail people and invade homes/vehicles), lying about whether protesters have assaulted them, and they are abusing weapons by throwing tear gas and pepper spray into cars and into the faces of people who have done nothing wrong except be present. ICE agents are using any imagined provocation to beat people up, injuring them before detaining them, then failing to provide medical care, food or water. ICE is not verifying whether those they detain are citizens or people with a legal right to be in the US, before hauling them away. This has been verified by judges who have reprimanded the way ICE agents behave and are trained.
ReplyDelete"It does not matter what that specific US citizen was doing before she was pulled out of her car and detained with force. It is not against the law to be an "activist" or protester or observer. She was in her car, so she was clearly going somewhere -- it makes no difference to her situation where she was going. It is no one's business. She has the right to drive her car down a public street without interference by ICE agents, who have no basis for suspecting she was a criminal or not a citizen, and no warrant to detain her.
ICE agents may have been instructed to harrass protesters, but that doesn't make their actions legal. Protesters are in the streets because ICE has been breaking the law. This situation justifies their presence. It doesn't mean the protesters deserved to be mistreated or did anything to deserve it, other than exercising their legal rights under our constitution.
Somerby does not seem to understand any of this. He keeps harping on irrelevant details, which he then claims are not being reported accuratelty. I cannot believe that a child of the 60s, who has been around as long as Somerby, still doesn't understand how non-violent protest works, including what is legal for federal agents and what is not. So, I see this ridiculous nonsense about "was she really on the way to the doctor" and "is she a bit older than claimed" as a smokescreen to muddy the situation, causing less informed people to wonder if perhaps ICE had a good reason to abuse protesters and whether they were provoked into manhandling women (age 46 or not). But if a woman lied about her age, should that get her beaten up in the street? If she was actually going home instead of to the doctor, does that give ICE the right to detain her? Absolutely not. None of that matters. So, why then does Somerby make a fuss about it?
"We can't vouch for the perfect accuracy of every part of Crane's report, but based on Crane's sourcing, we know of no obvious reason to assume the reporting is inaccurate."
ReplyDeleteIf Somerby has no basis for believing that the reporting is inaccurate, why is it necessary to raise the issue at all? Who on earth sets a standard of "perfect accuracy" of "every part" of anyone's reporting. Reporters and journalists are human beings, and as such they will get something wrong from time to time. That is why they print corrections when mistakes are pointed out. Somerby, of course, never prints his own corrections of his work. He rarely bothers to correct anything that someone points out is wrong with his work.
So, why does Somerby go out of his way to say that he doesn't see anything obviously wrong today? Because he wants people to be distrustful of reporting on this topic, even when he has no evidence or basis for claiming there are distortions. But in fairness, unless her finds big mistakes, he shouldn't be impugning the accuracy of any statements here, much less ones offered by the left. After all, we know for a fact that the biggest liars are the President and his cabinet, his own appointees, and that especially includes Noem and ICE agents, who make up big lies to cover up their wrongdoing, their attacks on citizens who have done nothing wrong but exercise their constitutional rights. By pretending that a woman who is slightly older than Somerby assumed, might be lying about her age, if nothing else, he impugns the protesters and plants the idea that they might have deserved being pulled out of a car and dragged to an SUV, for no stated reason, only to be released a bit later. Because the reporters, although seemingly accurate, may have missed what she did. And that is Somerby's participation in another lie, that the press may be concealing the wrongdoing of protesters by taking their word for what happened to them.
Somerby is a huge asshole. He is siding with ICE, without having the guts to say so, by making unfair attacks on the press, and by avoiding what all decent lefties know -- that ICE is an abomination installed by a fascist wannabe dictator who is incompetent and evil and shouldn't be president, except for the meddling of Russia in our nation's elections. When Soerby carries water for Noem, he becomes the worst of the worst, a truly ugly human being. Somerby should be ashamed to write this crap.
How do fuck cares about motives. Governments do not treat their citizens in this manner unless they are fucking Nazis. Fuck these mother fuckers.
ReplyDeleteBeing a resident in Minneapolis obstructs ICE activities. A live resident, I should add. After ICE kills you, you're not longer obstructing.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a crack overdose, Soros-monkey. Call an ambulance. Now.
Delete#SashaRiley
ReplyDelete