Omar Jamal, a Somali community advocate and Ramsey County sheriff civilian officer, has been released from federal custody about a month after he was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Jamal, 52, was released from the Freeborn County jail in Albert Lea after federal officials agreed to restore “the prior legal status quo” and “implicitly acknowledging that there is no current legal basis for his removal from the United States,” his attorneys Abdiqani Jabane and Nico Ratkowski said Tuesday in a statement, which didn’t give a date he was set free.
Omar Jamal speaks at a news conference at the state Capitol in St. Paul on Jan. 27, 2005. (John Doman / Pioneer Press)
Jamal was picked up by ICE agents on Aug. 29 in Minneapolis, 20 years after he was convicted in federal court in Tennessee on immigration fraud and sentenced to a year of probation.
Jamal’s attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against the ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Sept. 21, asking a judge to immediately review the legality of Jamal’s detention. They contend an immigration judge in 2005 granted Jamal withholding of removal to Somalia after finding his life or freedom would be threatened there.
The court file shows that U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge for the district of Minnesota, issued an order on Monday dismissing the lawsuit without prejudice and remanding the matter to ICE.
“While we maintain that Mr. Jamal should not have been arrested in the first place,” his attorneys’ statement read, “we commend and thank the U.S. Attorney’s Office and ICE for their cooperation in swiftly correcting the error and facilitating his release.”
Jamal joined the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office as a civilian community service officer in 2020 and had the support of Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who provided an affidavit in which he said Jamal “has played an integral role in helping liaison with the Somali community in Minnesota.”
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