On Jan. 13, Bahjo Abdi, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from Somalia, went to her regular monthly check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Bloomington.
She arrived at her 2 p.m. appointment 15 minutes early to ensure she wasn’t late. As usual, an officer called her inside to check in.
“Just as I went in, I noticed things were not as usual this time,” Bahjo said. “When they took me inside, I was confronted by two ICE officers asking me to hand over my phone. After that, they grabbed my hands behind my back and put handcuffs on me.
“I was shocked,” she said. “When they handcuffed me, all I could think of was the long journey I took to get here from Somalia. I remember feeling dizzy and having difficulty breathing, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a hospital.”
It appears immigration agents knew Bahjo was coming for her appointment and made plans to arrest her there, said her uncle, Abdulkadir Shirdoon.
Abdulkadir, who had accompanied his niece to her check-in, was waiting in the hallway.
“After 30 minutes of waiting for her, I knew something was wrong, because it usually doesn’t take that long,” he said.
Only when he asked the person calling people into the check-in office what had happened did he learn that Bahjo had been detained and taken from the building.
Bahjo came to the United States 15 months ago and has applied for asylum. She has been working at a care home on a work permit.
But going through the legal process to establish U.S. residence has been no protection for many Minnesotans. ICE agents’ practice of lurking outside immigration facilities and courtrooms and detaining asylum seekers who are going through the legal immigration process has occurred across the country.
When Bahjo’s family tried to find her, they learned she was at Southdale Hospital in Edina. They went there, but ICE agents refused to let them in. “They literally slammed the door on us in the hospital room,” Abdulkadir said.
After being released from the hospital that evening, Bahjo was taken to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul. Her family called her lawyer, and a judge ordered ICE not to deport Bahjo.
But the next morning, she was flown to Camp East Montana near El Paso, Texas.
“I was sick the entire two weeks that I was in detention,” Bahjo said. She suffered from nausea, episodic headaches and difficulty breathing.
“I had constant fear every time a guard came to the gate, thinking it was time they would send me to Somalia,” she said.
The detention camp was cold and overcrowded, and the guards were unfriendly, she said. Many detainees were sick, but when they called out to the guards for help, no one came, she said.
After two weeks of unlawful detention, Bahjo was returned to Minnesota. She is awaiting an immigration court hearing later this month.
‘They were just lying’
Like Bahjo, a Minneapolis resident who asked to be identified only as Mohamud due to safety concerns said he also went to the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program building in Bloomington for monthly or biweekly immigration check-ins.
When he was called in for a recent appointment, three ICE agents were waiting for him.
“They were very rough,” Mohamud said. “As soon as I entered, they jumped on me, grabbed my arms, and shoved me against the wall. ‘Please don’t hurt me,’ I begged, but they didn’t seem to care.”
After he was handcuffed and shackled, Mohamud asked the agents why he was being detained. They told him he had committed a violation, but would not say what it was.
“I was confused about what the violation was, because I knew I hadn’t violated anything,” he said. “I kept asking them what I violated, because I was worried they might have confused me with someone else, but they refused to tell me, and it turns out there was no violation — they were just lying.”
Bahjo and Mohamud are not alone. ICE’s tactics of lying and falsely accusing detainees and other civilians of wrongdoing have been widely documented in Minnesota and other parts of the nation.
Like Bahjo, Mohamud was taken to the Whipple Building, where he was able to call his lawyer. A judge ordered ICE not to remove Mohamud from Minnesota, but as in Bahjo’s case, ICE ignored the order.
The next morning, Mohamud was flown to Camp East Montana. He arrived at the detention camp around 3 p.m. His processing continued until 4 a.m., when he was able to sit down for the first time in 48 hours.
Mohamud was held in a newly built detention center, a camp made of tents, crammed with thousands of people. He fell sick there, but was given no medical care.
When a judge ordered Mohamud returned to Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had already been returned — while he was still detained in El Paso.
A few days later, Mohamud called his lawyer again. A judge then issued a third order for his return.
On the morning of Mohamud’s release, he asked for the return of his belongings, including his apartment and car keys, phone and documents. Immigration agents told him to get off the plane and wait until he received his belongings. When two days passed without their return, he returned to Minnesota without them.
“The guards were violent, always looking for any reason to put their hands on the detainees,” he said. “I was sick, coughing and sneezing nonstop, and the guards told me, ‘If you don’t stop coughing, we will make you stop.’”
Mohamud entered the United States in 2022, was granted a work permit and is in the process of seeking asylum.
LIke Bahjo, Mohamud is waiting for an immigration court hearing later this month.
Poor conditions in detention facilities
Bobby Painter, managing immigration attorney at the Texas Immigration Law Council, said conditions in all Texas detention centers are extremely poor.
Complaints include a lack of quality food, sanitary conditions and medical care, which has led to outbreaks of measles, COVID and flu-like illnesses. Adult detention centers such as Camp East Montana and the South Texas Immigration Processing Center south of San Antonio are reported to have the worst conditions.
Reports of violence are common. Detainees have described guards verbally abusing and physically attacking people and isolating them when they complain about not being helped, Painter said.
Detainees have the same constitutional rights as anyone else, he said. But the Department of Homeland Security does not communicate these rights to them or allow advocates and humanitarian organizations to enter the detention centers to help detainees understand their rights.
The Trump administration has also cut funding to many humanitarian organizations, leading to a loss of resources and staff, Painter said.
A large number of people are being booked at Texas detention centers each day, and the guard-to-detainee ratio is one guard for every 70 detainees, Painter said. This causes a backlog in processing, making it difficult to provide food, medical care and other resources.
According to POGO Investigates, ICE facilities failed 36.25% of inspections in 2025. The report by the Project on Government Oversight shows that in 2025, the number of detainees increased by 78%, reaching over 68,000 people, and deaths in detention centers climbed to 32, three times higher than in previous years.
Among the deaths reported this year was Nicaraguan national Victor Manuel Díaz, 36, who died in ICE custody on Jan. 14 at Camp East Montana. Family members have questioned whether his death was a suicide, as ICE reported.
‘We were all wrongfully arrested’
Khalid Mohamud, a St. Cloud resident, was arrested on Jan. 11 while sitting in his car at a convenience store. Three ICE vehicles surrounded him and agents came at him, yelling, “Get out of the car!”
He presented his I-94 credentials, which serve as evidence of legal visitor status, to the agents, but they put him in handcuffs and forced him into their vehicle. He was taken to the Whipple Building.
Accompanied by 25 ICE agents, he and eight other detainees were flown to Camp East Montana the next morning. The nine detainees included five Somalis, three Latinos and one Afghan. A Latino man was severely beaten by ICE agents and had a bruised face, a broken arm and bandages all over him, Khalid said.
When they arrived at the camp, the detainees were given color-coded uniforms, he said. Blue indicated the detainee had no criminal history; orange meant they had committed a minor violation, and red indicated they had a felony conviction.
“All of us who came on the same flight were given blue uniforms, which means we were all wrongfully arrested,” Khalid said.
After five days in the detention center, all nine detainees and one Eritrean were told they were free to go. The detainees were given their phones, but not their wallets, keys, driver’s licenses and other identification documents.
After their release, the five Somali individuals called their relatives in Minnesota, who connected them with a Somali family in Houston. They stayed with that family for two days until their relatives and a nonprofit organization arranged for transportation back to Minnesota.
Despite his ordeal, Khalid has not given up on America and his chance at finding a new and better life here.
“When I came back home from detention, my green card that I applied for a long time ago had arrived,” he said.
His voice held a note of excitement.
Freelance reporter Mohamud Farah contributed to this report.
