Responding to ICE Harassment and Protecting Our Community

Somali Legal Defense Fund: Responding to ICE Harassment and Protecting Our Community

Over the past few weeks, fear has spread rapidly through Somali communities across Minnesota.

Families are on edge. Parents are afraid to answer the door. Community members are being detained, questioned, and taken away—often with little explanation, limited access to legal counsel, and no clear information shared with loved ones.

This surge in ICE activity is not happening in a vacuum.

It comes amid renewed anti-immigrant rhetoric from Donald Trump, including disparaging and dehumanizing language toward immigrants and Muslims, and a broader climate of white nationalism that emboldens aggressive enforcement tactics. These words have consequences. They create permission structures for harassment, intimidation, and fear.

Our community is feeling those consequences right now.

This is why Citizen Academy launched the Somali Legal Defense Fund.

A Community-Led Response to a Moment of Crisis

The Somali Legal Defense Fund is a Citizen Academy project created to respond to the immediate legal and community needs of Somalis in Minnesota who are being targeted, harassed, detained, or swept into ICE enforcement actions.

People are being approached at their homes, workplaces, and in public spaces—often without understanding their rights, without access to Somali-speaking legal support, and without time to prepare.

For many, the experience feels less like “enforcement” and more like terrorization.

This fund exists to:

• Support Somali individuals detained or targeted by ICE
• Connect families to trusted, culturally responsive legal defense
• Provide Know Your Rights education in Somali and English
• Help prevent unnecessary detention, prolonged incarceration, and family separation

This Is Happening Now

These are not abstract policy debates.
These are real people. Real families. Real fear.

Children are asking where their parents are.
Spouses are scrambling for answers.
Elders are reliving trauma many thought they had left behind decades ago.

For a community that includes refugees and survivors of war, displacement, and state violence, this moment is especially painful. The tactics being used—sudden detention, intimidation, silence—mirror experiences many Somalis fled in the first place.

Why Legal Defense and Education Matter

In moments like this, time and information are everything.

Without immediate legal support:

• People may unknowingly waive their rights
• Families may not know where their loved ones are held
• Detentions can drag on unnecessarily
• Communities are left isolated and afraid

The Somali Legal Defense Fund is grounded in a simple principle:
No one should face ICE alone, in fear, or in silence.

How You Can Stand With the Community

This work depends on collective action.

Your support helps:

• Cover urgent legal defense costs
• Fund Know Your Rights trainings led in Somali
• Support families navigating detention and legal systems
• Build a rapid-response infrastructure rooted in the community

Whether you are a funder, organizer, or community ally, your support matters—right now.

This Is a Call to Act

Silence and delay only deepen harm.

Citizen Academy launched the Somali Legal Defense Fund because this moment demands action, solidarity, and protection. Our community deserves safety, dignity, and the ability to live without fear of harassment or disappearance.

Stand with Somali families.
Support legal defense.
Help push back against intimidation and injustice.

The time is now.