Ilhan Omar, incoming state House representative for District 60B, was verbally attacked while riding in a cab to her hotel in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.
Omar, who was voted in November the nation’s first Somali-American lawmaker, said in a Wednesday Facebook post that she got in the cab after a series of meetings at The White House and “became subjected to the most hateful, derogatory, islamophobic, sexist taunts and threats I have ever experienced.”
The cab driver called her ‘ISIS’ and threatened to remove her hijab, Omar said in the post.
Omar was in Washington, D.C. to study potential state policies.
“I pray for his humanity and for all those who harbor hate in their hearts,” Omar said in the post.
Omar said in response to a comment on her post that she will report the incident to Minneapolis police, adding that because the cab driver was aware of which hotel she was staying in, she didn’t feel safe handling the incident in Washington.
Omar said she wrote down the cab number, but did not immediately provide information about the driver on social media, except that he was not white.
Omar was born in Somalia and settled in the Minneapolis Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in 1997.