Advocacy group calls for investigation after viral Shakopee confrontation video
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A viral TikTok video captured a racially charged confrontation in Shakopee on Monday. Now, a local advocacy group has called for an investigation into the incident.
The video appears to show a man and a woman confronting two women, described in the post as members of a Somali family born in the U.S., looking at a house. In the video, the man tells one woman, “Nobody wants you here,” and later says, “I can smell you from here.”
MPR News confirmed a family member of the two women filed an incident report with Shakopee police.
Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Thursday the group wants local, state and federal authorities to examine the video for possible civil rights violations.
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"We want to make sure that law enforcement do their due diligence and care in a matter of assessing the reality of what took place here," Hussein said.
“I think it’s clear that this type of harassment, that is blatantly racist targeting a Somali family, deserves to be reviewed,” he said.” he said.
Seidlich Law, a Florida-based firm, represents the couple shown confronting the women in the video. The firm released a statement to KARE-TV that the couple “categorically deny any and all allegations implied by this video.”
“This is a situation where a provocateur is capitalizing on political tensions to play the victim, rather than the primary aggressor,” the statement read.
The statement also said that Seidlich Law had contacted law enforcement, including the Department of Justice, about potential criminal charges.
Hussein said that President Trump’s targeting of Muslim Americans, especially the Somali American community, has led to an “unprecedented level of threats, intimidation and targeting.”
He said CAIR Minnesota has seen all types of discrimination — the targeting of Somali businesses, phone calls, online harassment and bullying in schools, to name a few — but this viral video shows something else.
“Individuals feeling emboldened to target Somali Americans, harass them.”
CAIR Minnesota reported 693 complaints in 2025, according to a CAIR civil rights report published in March.
The 2025 number is a 96 percent increase over the 353 complaints CAIR Minnesota reported in 2024.
The civil rights report also said that 158 of these complaints were documented in December. That’s about 23 percent of the 2025 total.
The report notes that President Trump referred to Somalis as “garbage” on Dec. 3, and this coincides with the increase in complaints that month. Operation Metro Surge also ramped up in December, the report said.
