A St. Paul auto mechanic with a valid work permit, a Social Security number and no criminal record beyond two parking tickets is spending the 25th anniversary of 9/11 locked inside the cellblock built at Guantánamo Bay for terrorism suspects — after immigration agents told him he was headed home to Somalia.

Adam Abdullah, 31, came to the United States as an asylum seeker in 2023 and had been checking in regularly with immigration officials while his case moved through the system, according to Minnesota Public Radio's original reporting. Federal agents pulled him over on December 12, 2025, as part of an operation local officials have dubbed "Operation Metro Surge." Abdullah said the agents offered no warrant and no explanation beyond telling him "we are immigration" and that they already knew who he was. A search of Minnesota court records turns up nothing more serious than two tickets for failing to move his car during snow emergencies.

A detour to Cuba

After weeks shuttled between jails in Albert Lea, Minnesota, Covington, Kentucky, and a Louisiana facility, Abdullah says he was shackled at the wrists and ankles and put on a flight he was told would take him to Miami, refuel, and continue to Somalia. Instead, he landed at Guantánamo Bay's Camp Six — a unit built two decades ago to hold men accused of terrorism. He has now been there roughly two weeks, one of eight Somali detainees at the base, several of them also from the Twin Cities.

Conditions inside, Abdullah told MPR by phone, include shackling during transport, phone calls capped at five to ten minutes, and limited time outdoors. His attorney, Marc Prokosch, says the arrangement effectively strips away attorney-client privilege. "If I have a client detained at a facility in the US, I can go physically visit them," Prokosch told Reason magazine, but Guantánamo is out of reach.

"THEY SAY WE DON'T NEED A WARRANT; WE ARE IMMIGRATION," ABDULLAH SAID OF THE AGENTS WHO DETAINED HIM.

The Department of Homeland Security has described the detainees sent to the base as "some of the worst of the worst," but did not respond to questions about Abdullah's record or say how many people are currently held there. The transfers trace back to a broader push by the administration to route immigration detainees through the naval base, which the ACLU has been fighting in federal court since early last year on behalf of detainees it says have no legal basis for being held overseas. Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's lead attorney on the case, called sending immigrants like Abdullah to Guantánamo "illegal and illogical," noting it costs more and accomplishes less than domestic detention.

Abdullah's case lands amid a wider immigration crackdown that has swept up Somali residents of the Twin Cities in recent months, even as the anniversary of the September 11 attacks drew renewed attention this week to the base's original purpose as a wartime detention site. A federal hearing tied to the ACLU's challenge is scheduled for October 14, when a judge could rule on whether the administration has authority to keep moving detainees like Abdullah to the island at all. Until then, his attorney says, he waits — one of a handful of men without terrorism charges sitting inside a facility built for exactly that.