Aliya Rahman was arrested for standing up. That’s it. That’s the story.
On Tuesday night, the 43-year-old Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen attended President Trump’s State of the Union address as a guest of Representative Ilhan Omar. When Trump launched into a racist tirade against Minnesota’s Somali community — calling them “pirates” who had “pillaged” taxpayer resources and declaring that “importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA” — Rahman stood up from her seat in the gallery.
Silently.
No sign. No chanting. No disruption.
She simply stood.
“There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up. I was arrested for standing up.”
For that, Capitol Police forcibly removed her from the chamber, arrested her, and charged her with “unlawful conduct.” She spent hours in custody and wasn’t released until nearly 4 a.m.
If Rahman’s name sounds familiar, it should. Just weeks ago, she made national headlines when a viral video (below) showed federal immigration agents violently dragging her out of her car on a Minneapolis street.
Rahman, a Bangladeshi American software engineer, had been on her way to an appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center when ICE agents surrounded her vehicle.
She told them she was disabled. She told them she was a U.S. citizen. They dragged her out anyway.
She was detained, denied medical attention, and only taken to a hospital after she lost consciousness.
She was eventually released without any charges — because there were never any charges to file.
She had done nothing wrong. She was simply driving while brown in a city under siege by federal immigration officers.
Brutalized Twice by Her Own Government
The injuries Rahman sustained during that January encounter haven’t healed.
She suffers from a torn rotator cuff tendon and cartilage tears in both shoulders that may require surgery.
She told officers at the Capitol about her injuries before they removed her. They didn’t care.
According to Rahman and witnesses in the gallery, officers pulled on her injured shoulders as they dragged her out.
Two other attendees tried to intervene.
One woman in a white shirt pleaded with officers to stop touching her and let her walk out with her cane. They refused.
Rahman was taken to George Washington University Hospital for treatment before being booked at Capitol Police headquarters.
She appeared on Democracy Now (below) just hours after her release, still wearing the same clothes from the State of the Union, and delivered a line that cuts straight to the heart of this moment in American history.
“There are only two things you can do at the State of the Union, and they are sit down and stand up,” Rahman said. “I was arrested for standing up.”
Her attorney, Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center, called the arrest a “blatant abuse of power,” noting that Rahman was not holding a sign, making gestures, or wearing protest gear.
She was standing in silence — something dozens of other guests did throughout the evening every time Trump said something his supporters agreed with.
The Speech That Provoked Her
The context of Rahman’s silent protest matters. During his address, Trump referred to Somali Minnesotans as “pirates” and accused them of rampant fraud and corruption.
He announced that Vice President JD Vance would lead a “war on fraud” targeting the state.
He glorified the Department of Homeland Security — the same agency whose officers dragged Rahman from her car and whose agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Representative Omar shouted back from the chamber floor: “That’s a lie! You’re a liar!” and “You have killed Americans!” — a reference to Good and Pretti, whose deaths Trump conspicuously failed to mention during his entire address.
Representative Norma Torres of California held up a placard with photos of the two slain Americans and the words “Premeditated Murder.”
Omar has since demanded a full investigation into why her guest was arrested and treated so aggressively.
The Capitol Police, for their part, issued a statement saying tickets to the event clearly state that “demonstrating is prohibited” and that Rahman “refused to obey our lawful orders” to sit down.
Standing, apparently, is now a crime — but only if you’re standing against the president.
A Chilling Message
Rahman didn’t attend the State of the Union looking for trouble. She went because she felt she had no choice.
As she explained in an interview before the event, she was “painfully aware” that what happened to her happens to people across the country every day — except most of them don’t get to come home to their communities afterward.
She went to be seen. She went to make it harder for the people in that room to pretend that the human cost of this administration’s immigration crackdown doesn’t exist.
And when the president of the United States stood at the podium and dehumanized an entire community while celebrating the very agency that brutalized her, she responded in the most restrained way imaginable.
She stood up.
And they arrested her for it.
As Omar said in her statement: “The heavy-handed response to a peaceful guest sends a chilling message about the state of our democracy.”
That’s an understatement. When a disabled American citizen can be dragged from her car by federal agents without cause, and then weeks later be arrested for the act of silently standing in the people’s house, we are not living in a democracy that is merely under threat.
We are living in one that is actively being dismantled — one quiet, brutal arrest at a time.
Resist Hate is a progressive media organization covering civil rights, democracy, and social justice.
