San Diego Immigrant Detention Demonstrations - Omar Mohammed & Somalian Community
Omar Abdi Mohammed fled Somalia after he was detained and brutally tortured for allegedly supporting resistance to the dictatorship. In 1995 Mr. Mohammed arrived in the United States as a refugee.
An elder and leader in San Diego's Somalian Community, Mr. Mohammed was arrested when he reported for a citizenship interview in January 2004. Mr. Mohammed remains in detention at Otay Mesa on charges related to work with Muslim charities and immigration proceedings.
San Diego County's Somalian Community (approx 10,000 people) was built by a refugee stream in the early 1990's and sustained through family-based immigration in the years that followed. The reaction to Mr. Mohammed's detention marks the community's first public political engagement in San Diego. Sensing an attack on Muslims like Mr. Mohammed, wives, husbands, sons, and daughters demonstrate outside the Federal Building in downtown San Diego.
These images document the strength, volume, and energy of those demonstrations.