Civil rights groups fight back as Trump policies target Black voters, Muslim communities

Two of the country’s leading civil rights organizations are litigating legal challenges against Trump administration policies they say dilute Black voting rights and systematically target Muslims.

CAIR-Minnesota hosted Somali American Solidarity Day at the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday, drawing speakers who argued that President Donald Trump’s policies have made Muslim and immigrant communities daily targets of suspicion and state power. The rally came as CAIR-MN announced it is representing a Minnesota labor organizer whose phone and books were seized by federal agents upon her return from Europe.

Janette Corcelius, a community organizer with OPEIU Local 12, arrived at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on April 30 after a two-week trip abroad, where she had been promoting a Minneapolis City Council resolution urging European banks to cut ties with companies that contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. After opting out of a facial recognition scan, she was stopped by Department of Homeland Security agents, who seized her phone and dozens of books she had collected overseas.

“If the violation of my First and Fourth Amendment rights in retaliation for my political beliefs, organizing, and identity was meant to inflict fear and suffering, then it has failed,” Corcelius said. “I am unabated and undeterred.”

Alec Shaw, a civil rights attorney at CAIR-MN, saw the seizure as part of a broader crackdown on political dissent. “American Muslims are being targeted for the healthy criticism of their government, the most democratic action a citizen can take,” Shaw said. “We stand with Minnesotans and we stand with Ms. Corcelius today.”

Speakers at the solidarity rally drew on history and current events to argue that the targeting of Somali Americans reflects a long American tradition of scapegoating immigrant communities.

“We are tired of being treated like suspects. We’re tired of political scapegoating. We are tired of entire communities carrying blame for headlines, and for elections and for talking points,” said Suleiman Adan, deputy director of CAIR-MN.

Adan invoked Malcolm X to draw a line from the civil rights era to the present. “Malcolm X once said that if you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing,” Adan said. “Today the only thing that has changed is instead of a print newspaper, we have platforms like X. Instead of an editor in chief we have folks like Elon Musk.”

Eva Ngono, civic engagement advocacy manager for Ayada Leads, described the compounding pressures Black Muslim women face in the current political climate. “We peel back expectations put onto us as women, sisters, mothers and as daughters, as Black and African women, as Muslim women, as immigrants and first generation Americans,” Ngono said. “The weight that is carried by holding all those identities at once is heavy in our United States of America.”

“Today is so important because young Somali girls are watching right now,” Ngono added. “They are watching how adults respond when their community is under pressure. They are watching whether people stay silent. They are watching who shows up.”

The Afghan Cultural Society’s Nasreen Sajady highlighted how her community leaned on Somali Americans when resettling in Minnesota. “When searching for a location for our community center, we ultimately chose the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, in large part because of the Somali community’s solidarity with us,” Sajady said.

Hundreds of miles to the southeast, the NAACP is fighting on a different front.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a new congressional map into law that carves up the state’s only majority-Black district, splitting Memphis across three separate districts, in a special session called at Trump’s request. The Tennessee Legislature’s Republican supermajority passed the map days after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

The NAACP filed an emergency lawsuit arguing Tennessee Republicans violated their own state laws and constitutional limits in their push to redraw the map, noting the state had explicitly prohibited congressional redistricting between census cycles for more than five decades before Republicans repealed that prohibition. The suit remains pending.

“It is a direct attack on our democracy and our Constitution to dismantle majority-Black districts. A democracy without Black representation is not a democracy,” said NAACP General Counsel Kristen Clarke.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton subsequently removed Democratic lawmakers from all House committees after they protested the gerrymander, stripping every Black elected official in the Tennessee legislature of their committee assignments.

Back in Minnesota, Adan closed with a message of belonging to his community.

“You are not an outsider in this state,” he said.

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