Two Twin Cities women who were detained by federal officials in high-profile cases were arrested Wednesday and are federally charged in separate incidents.

Inver Grove Heights paraprofessional Christina Rank, 25, is charged with allegedly following a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicle and causing a collision in her school’s parking lot. Also charged is a 23-year-old Somali-American woman, Nasra Ahmed, who lives in St. Paul and was born in Minnesota. She was previously detained for two days.

Nasra Ahmed, left, and Christina Rank (Frederick Melo / Pioneer Press and courtesy of the Rank family)

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrests of Rank, Ahmed and 14 others on the social media platform X, calling them “Minnesota rioters” for “allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement — people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents.”

Criminal complaints for Rank and Ahmed allege they “forcibly assaulted, resisted, opposed, impeded, intimidated, and interfered” with a deportation officer.

Christina Rank

Rank’s mother, Sarah Hunkele, previously told the Pioneer Press that her daughter was arrested in the parking lot of the Concord Education Center on Jan. 12 and spent 12 hours in custody at the ICE detention facility at Fort Snelling before being released pending an investigation.

Rank appeared in court on the felony charge Wednesday afternoon and was released pending a future court hearing. Hunkele said her daughter’s attorney was still in court and unavailable for comment.

“The bigger story is the comments made by the AG along with the release of all the mugshots of those individuals in court today,” Hunkele said in a text message to the Pioneer Press. “Our system is innocent until proven guilty and that was not their message.”

According to the criminal complaint, ICE officers were conducting immigration enforcement and parked at Concord Education Center on Broderick Boulevard. Rank drove up in her car and asked the officers, who were wearing “their issued vest carriers which identified them as law enforcement,” whether they were ICE.

When the officers left the parking lot, Rank tailed immediately behind them in her car. After a short drive, with Rank still behind, the officers attempted to re-enter the parking lot. Rank then drove into an oncoming lane and across the parking lot entrance at the same time the officers were turning into the lot, causing the collision, the complaint alleges.

Hunkele had questioned why the ICE agents were at the school, which offers alternative learning services for nine south metro public school districts. She said her daughter has been a paraprofessional at the school for the past seven years, working one-on-one with students with disabilities.

“She’s young,” Hunkele said. “She’s very passionate about her work. She’s very caring. She would never do anything with ill intent.”

Nasra Ahmed

Ahmed is a U.S. citizen who has no documented criminal history in Minnesota. She spoke out after she was previously detained and said: “I gave them my ID since they asked. I did everything they asked.”

Deportation officers on Jan. 14 “were conducting a targeted operation” and “a knock and talk” and were returning to their vehicles when a woman, later identified as Ahmed, yelled obscenities and threw an egg at one of their legs, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent wrote in an affidavit.

The deportation officers approached to arrest her and she “struggled with officers” and spit in two officers’ faces, the affidavit said.

Ahmed or her family couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon.

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