At the height of Operation Metro Surge, federal officers arrested 23-year-old Nasra Ahmed, posted her booking photo on social media and named her in a news release alleging 16 Minnesotans assaulted immigration agents.

Four months later the U.S. Attorney’s Office asked to drop the charges. On Friday, a judge officially dismissed the case, going a step further to protect Ahmed from “prosecutorial harassment” by specifying prosecutors must not bring the charges again.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint against Ahmed in January, alleging she approached ICE agents after an unsuccessful raid in St. Paul, yelling obscenities and throwing an egg that struck one of the agents in the leg. She was also accused of spitting at an officer.

Ahmed disputed that narrative, saying agents stopped her near her apartment when she was on her way to get a prescription and demanded her ID. The U.S.-born citizen said one of the agents called her by a racial slur, so she argued, resulting in agents forcefully pinning her to the ground.

On Jan. 20 a warrant was issued for Ahmed’s arrest and a judge ordered the complaint sealed.

But then-U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi made a social media post calling Ahmed a “rioter,” which received 3.3 million views. The Department of Homeland Security amplified the message on X, calling the defendants “violent anti-ICE anarchists” fighting to keep rapists and murderers in Minnesota.

On Feb. 6, the government quietly refiled Ahmed’s case, along with several others, downgrading the assault charge from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Last month, prosecutors requested dismissal rather than provide certain evidence they had been ordered to produce. Ahmed held out, arguing that the case should be dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning the government shouldn’t be allowed to bring it back in the future.

On Friday, Judge John Tunheim sided with Ahmed, scolding prosecutors for not providing a reason for their request to dismiss. The office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

An explanation for abandoning a case is necessary for preventing abuse of power, and to prevent the government from using dismissal to evade court demands for evidence, he wrote.

“The government was confronted with court-imposed deadlines that it was not prepared to meet and a prosecution it was not equipped to pursue after choosing to bring the case,” Tunheim wrote in his order. “The government’s actions in this case violated a court order, likely violated the Department of Justice’s own policies, and undermined the presumption of innocence that lies at the heart of our criminal justice system.”

Ahmed is among more than a dozen Minnesotans who were initially charged during Operation Metro Surge of felony-level crimes, only to have their charges downgraded and ultimately dismissed. In several of the cases, the U.S. Attorney’s Office requested dismissal without explanation.

While describing her experience at a Jan. 21 news conference, Ahmed went viral internationally after comparing being Somali American to a cultural fusion of “bananas and rice.”

susan.du@startribune.com