‘St Paul has been under siege’: mayor confronts ICE as federal raids roil Twin Cities

Minneapolis protests have transfixed the US, but Kaohly Her’s city, home to a large immigrant population, has been targeted by ICE for half a year

Kaohly Her has one of the most striking background stories in US politics – a Hmong refugee born in a bamboo hut in the mountains of Laos who came to the US at age three as part of a Vietnam-war era resettlement program.

Now, as the newly installed mayor of Saint Paul, the city twinned with Minneapolis, she has emerged as an important figure in Minnesota, the solidly Democratic state targeted by the Trump administration’s exercise of controversial immigration policies.

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