It is chilling to see that the U.S. government views local Somali Americans as acceptable “collateral damage” in their pursuit of “terror suspects.”
The government uses the tweeted death threats against the FBI agents and a federal judge that came from 20-year-old Khaalid Abdulkadir as an excuse to terrorize his family. When the FBI stormed the house, one of the many children of the family could have been on the other side of the door and could have been seriously hurt or even killed. When they threw concussion grenades into the house this is a form of terrorism, and one of the children could have been seriously hurt.
When the suspect is in the house, he is not able to harm any judge or agents that he may have threatened, so the same sense of urgency to storm the house has no legitimacy. They could have easily apprehended the 20-year-old as he was coming out of the house instead of terrorizing and endangering his parents and younger siblings.
The FBI used this situation in an opportunistic way to get violent and aggressive towards people of color when they did not need to. The FBI would never see White children in the suburbs as collateral damage that they could harm or even kill in the course of apprehending a suspect.
The government looks at the Somali community as an acceptable war zone where they can be as reckless as they want and then blame it on the suspect.
Frank Erickson lives in Minneapolis.
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