Less than a week after Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, USA, another woman from the Minnesota city got embroiled in a scuffle with the authorities.

Footage now gone viral all over social media showed a screaming woman being dragged from her car by ICE agents in the US city. The individual has since been identified as 42-year-old Aliya Rahman, a US-born tech guru with several other credentials, including ones on the turf of activism.

Why is Aliya Rahman in the news? Minneapolis woman dragged by ICE agents

As per the scenes caught on camera, ICE agents were seen breaking the Minneapolis woman’s car window and pulling her out on the street on Tuesday (US time). Disturbing visuals from the scene captured federal agents forcefully hauling her out of a black Ford Fusion while she desperately held on to the car’s side door, as per reports by the Daily Mail and New York Post.

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Aliya Rahman can be heard crying out in the arrest video: “I’m disabled. I’m trying to go to the doctor up there.” However, multiple masked ICE agents continued to viciously pull her into a federal vehicle.

Rahman, on her part, has since broken her silence on the issue. “These last few days have been traumatising and overwhelming,” she told Newsweek. “First and foremost, I feel lucky to be alive. What I thought would be a routine trip to my appointment at the Traumatic Brain Injury Center turned into an assault by federal agents.”

Describing the harrowing experience, she said that ICE agents bound her like an “animal,” even after she told them that she was “disabled.” Looking back at how things spiralled in the Renee Good case, she added, “This happened just two blocks from where Renee Good was murdered, so I am very aware that this confrontation could have ended differently for me.”

What do we know about Aliyah Rahman?

According to her LinkedIn profile, Rahman is a self-proclaimed “community-focused security practitioner, full stack developer, and engineering manager” with over 15 years of experience “in the game.” Per her official profile, she last served as a software engineering manager at Anywhere Real Estate Inc.

Having completed both her MSed in Curriculum and Instruction and Bachelor’s in Science – BS, Chemistry, Mathematics from Purdue University, she claims to have “deep knowledge in Python (Django, Flask) and TypeScript/JavaScript (React, nextjs, node.js).”

Meanwhile, exclusive details reported by the Daily Mail offering more insight into Rahman’s personal life indicated that she is a US-born citizen who grew up in Bangladesh. The outlet further identified her long-running social justice activism streak. Citing her Tech for Social Justice profile, it said that Rahman is a technologist and social justice trainer focussing on LGBTQ+ and racial injustice causes.

According to the Mail’s report, Rahman moved to Washington DC in 2014 and started working for Code for Progress, a nonprofit dedicated to highlighting diversity in the tech world. She is then said to have moved to Minneapolis two years later.

“‘Homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment in Bangladesh, and I thought I probably shouldn’t stay there,” she told Tech for Social Justice (T4SJ) at one point. As per the Daily Mail’s account, Rahman’s mother is a Wisconsin native and her father is a Bengali refugee who fled to the US during the 1971 genocide. heir family is said to have to Bangladesh when Aliyah was merely a few months old.

The Minneapolis woman is a registered Democrat, who jumped into the activism line while pursuing aeronautical engineering at Purdue University, as per the Daily Mail. The swift to that side reportedly came after two of her cousins were killed in 9/11 terror attacks.

As per The Mail, Rahman identifies herself as genderqueer, and has gotten entangled with the authorities even earlier. According court records obtained by the UK news outlet, the Minnesota woman previously pled guilty to criminal trespassing charges in Ohio and has also had to face multiple traffic violations.

Her first traffic offence reportedly dates backs to 2009, when she was charged with driving without insurance in Illinois. In 2010, she was charged with driving under the influence (DUI). As per Ohio public records cited by The Mail, Rahman pled guilty to that charge.

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Why was Aliyah Rahman arrested on Tuesday? Where is she now?

Seemingly blocking ICE vehicles during a protest, Rahman was ultimately taken into custody on Tuesday for allegedly assaulting an ICE officer, as per a Department of Homeland Security spokesman’s confirmation to the Daily Mail.

Without name-dropping her directly, the spokesman told the outlet, “As officers carried out their law enforcement duties, a significant crowd surrounded them and began impeding law enforcement operations— a federal crime.

“One agitator ignored multiple commands by an officer to move her vehicle away from the scene, she was arrested for obstruction. Another agitator assaulted an officer by jumping on his back. Six of these agitators were taken into custody for assaulting law enforcement.”

On the other hand, a person claiming to be the woman’s friend has since told MPR News that Rahman was released from custody by 6 pm Tuesday.

Aliyah Rahman’s detention comes less than a week after Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, was killed at the hands of an ICE agent in Minneapolis. DHS pushed that the woman was allegedly trying to run over law enforcement officers at the time. However, local officials have disputed these claims, while demonstrators in Minneapolis continue to protest and demand justice.