St. Paul’s New Illegal Alien Mayor Vows to Fight ICE

“I am illegal in this country.”

“I am illegal in this country. My parents are illegal here in this country,” Former Minnesota State Rep. Kaohly Her declared.

Her ran in the 2025 St. Paul mayoral election on a promise to fight ICE and protect illegal aliens. While she lost the election, the usual ‘ranked choice’ shenanigans that elevated Mamdani in New York City, and other urban leftists, put her ahead of Melvin Carter III who was not an illegal.

In her inaugural address, Mayor Kaohly Her described federal immigration enforcement as an “unprecedented incursion that we must meet head on.” She spoke while surrounded by minority female politicians as well as Robert ‘Susan Kimblery’ Sylvester: a former deputy mayor who now claims to be a transgender woman.

This secessionist rhetoric was soon paired with a secessionist ordinance commanding federal law enforcement not to operate on ‘city-owned property’ as if St. Paul had somehow seceded from the United States.

“When ICE comes here again we are working together as a community. Lets not forget who is the aggressor here,” Her warned.

Shortly after taking office, ICE carried out a raid at the home of a friend of the mayor, a fellow Hmong, who had been allegedly living with two sexual predators, one of whom was wanted for sexual assault against a minor, rape and kidnapping, while the other was wanted for sexual assault and gang activity.

Mayor Her described the raid as “heartbreaking” and claimed, “I don’t know how anybody looking at that could ever justify the treatment of another human being that way.”

Her’s administration is now reportedly teaching open borders activists how to confront and challenge federal immigration enforcement officers.

The former community organizer bizarrely claimed that “I have family members who haven’t opened their drapes in days because they’re afraid someone can see in and see that they are Asian.” This seems wildly implausible for anyone who is legally in the United States.

The question is whether Kaohly Her is one of those people.

Before her declaration that “I am illegal in this country” went viral, Her explained that she was a citizen by way of her family committing immigration fraud. “Because his mother had died, my father as the one processing the paperwork put my grandmother down as his mother, and so I am illegal in this country.”

A more detailed explanation was offered by Her in a clean up chat with the Minnesota Reformer offering an even more troubling and corrupt explanation. ‘Her’s father worked at the U.S. consulate, and he processed their family’s paperwork in a way to expedite their timeline to immigrate to the U.S. as refugees. People who were set to come to the U.S. as refugees could do so quicker if they had family connections to the military, CIA or USAID. Her said her family didn’t qualify for those pipelines, but an uncle — in the Hmong familial sense of the word, i.e., a family friend — worked for USAID. When Her’s father processed the refugee paperwork, he claimed familial connection to the friend that worked for USAID, which wasn’t accurate.”

By “wasn’t accurate”, Mayor Her appeared to mean fraudulent and completely false.

In either version of the explanation, Her’s family committed naturalization fraud and can potentially be denaturalized and deported. No wonder then that Her fears ICE so much.

The Her family fraud, claiming fictional family ties, is likely the same one practiced by the Omar family, and is a commonplace enough form of immigration fraud among Somalis and Hmong where large family groups make it difficult to determine relationships and where falsely claiming relationships for immigration benefits has become so routine as to be almost unremarkable.

ICE programs like Operation Twin Shield and Operation PARRIS uncovering marriage and family immigration fraud in Minnesota would only have further freaked out Her and her radical allies who have only escalated their campaign against federal immigration law enforcement.

Her has claimed that ICE is targeting people for being Asian. That’s a lie. ICE is targeting criminals and fraudsters. And the people most afraid of ICE, like Her, have something to hide.

Meanwhile federal immigration authorities are struggling to enforce the law in a city where the mayor is not only flouting the law, but is a confessed beneficiary of immigration fraud.

Eight years ago, two Minnesota Somalis had been denaturalized, one for lying about having been convicted of raping a 7-year-old and another for lying that she was married to and the mother of four children. The current wave of fraud in the Somali community is all built on the original sin of immigration fraud. And Her’s background shows how deeply it has also penetrated into other ‘refugee’ communities like the Hmong.

If Mayor Kaohly Her wants to try and wage war on the federal government while acting like St. Paul is not part of the United States, the federal government can and should denaturalize and deport her back to her homeland where she can argue about citizenship and borders over there.

Her believed that declaring “I am illegal in this country” would demonstrate the futility of trying to enforce immigration laws. It does just the opposite. It shows how badly we need to enforce them.

Mayor Kaohly Her isn’t just the beneficiary of immigration fraud. She is what happens when immigration fraud goes unpunished. Letting the Her family get away with it didn’t make America safer. It made St. Paul break off from the United States, it exposed federal law enforcement officers to violent assault and undermined the existence of the country that the Hers invaded.

When Mayor Kaohly Her declared, “I am illegal in this country”, she challenged Americans to do anything about. Her challenge has gone unanswered and so the violence in St. Paul goes on.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.

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